AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

$7.00 £3.00

ALFRED PERCY SINNETT

Published in full for the first time.

THEOSOPIDCAL IDSTORY CENTRE

LONDON

1986

THE AUTHOR

Alfred Percy Sinnett ( 1840-1921) was one of the main recipi­ents of The Mahatma Letters. He was Vice-President of The Theosophical Society (Adyar). His most notable books were "The Occult World" and "Esoteric Buddhism".

First Edition - November 1986

ALSO AVAILABLE

PUBLICATIONS FROM THEOSOPHICAL HISTORY CENTRE

All prices include postage. Dollars are American only Send to: T. H. C., 50 Gloucester Place, London W1H 3HJ

Theosophy and the Theosophical Society

Professor James A. Santucci

£1 .50 (S:n 35 pages ISBN 0 948753 00 5

A brief historical introduction to Theosophy

Madame B1avatsky Unveiled?

Leslie Price

£2.50 ($5) 44 pages ISBN 0 948753 01 3

A critical discussion of the 1885 Report, in the context of the wider question of H. P. B.'s work.

J' Accuse; An Examination of the Hodgson Report of 1885

Dr. Vernon Harrison

£1.50 ($3)

The official S. P. R. offprint of the paper in the April issue of S. P. R. Journal. With a note by Dr. John Be1off, the Editor.

Introduction

The object of this booklet is to print in full a typescript held by The Theosophical Society (Adyar), anq grateful thanks are extended to the English Section for permission to use their copy. The typescript is one of several manuscripts left by Mr. Sinnett at death; one appeared as "The Early Days of Theosophy in Europe" (T.P.H., London, 1922), and another as "Superphysical Science" (T.P.H., London, 1924). It is not known if a handwritten version of the Autobiography survives. Enquiries of The British Library, who hold the Mahatma Letters sent to Mr. Sinnett, and of The Mahatma Letters Trust, who hold the copyright of the third published edition, have not disclosed such a version. But along with various other documentation associated with Mr. Sinnett, it may yet turn up.

Internal evidence suggests that this typescript was not made by Mr. Sinnett himself, and it would be unwise to hold him respons­ible for any spelling or similar errors in it. Certain obvious typing mistakes have been corrected, but others undoubtedly remain. No deliberate omissions have been made. For the convenience of readers, an extra page number appears on the top right of the pages, which corresponds with the page number of the typescript. (One or two Theosophical writers have cited the typescript and quoted from it, but it has never been published in full before.)

A text such as this cries out for a critical and scholarly edition, which will attempt to trace the history of the manuscript, the stance of the writer, the relationship between this account and others that he wrote and the numerous questions that naturally arise from the parade of characters through its pages. We may hope that such an edition will be attempted before long. Meanwhile, the reader is cautioned that Mr. Sinnett's version of several events would be disputed by other witnesses ; that some Theosophists

think he was curiously prejudiced against Madame Blavatsky whom he yet did much to publicly defend; and that Mr. Sinnett's enthusiasm for the revelations of sensitives would not be generally shared by Theosophical teachers. Many a Theosophical sermon might be preached on the story told here!

The quarterly journal "Theosophical History", described in­side the back cover, will carry further information about the life and work of Mr. Sinnett, starting with an article in the October 1986 issue that identifies the clairvorant "Mary".

This is the largest publishing project so far undertaken by The Theosophical History Centre. Readers are urged to support the work of the Centre by taking out subscriptions as described on the back cover. Although the Centre enjoys great goodwill from students all over the world, it is not fmancially supported by any organisation. There are many significant historical texts that we would like to publish but we cannot yet do so because of shortage of funds.

Leslie Price

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

ALFRED PERCY SINNETI

I prepare this record of the experiences I have gone through in the cur­rent life for publication at some future period. After the present physical phase of my life shall have come to an end - if the trustees in whose hands I leave the manuscript may think fit to deal with it in that way. As a volume of reminiscences from the common-place point of view the record will have no value. My present incarnation would have been interesting to none but a few personal friends if it had been concerned merely with the insignificant occmrences of mundane experiences - But it has been deeply woven in with the beginning of the great Theosophical movement and that condition of things may render future Theosophists interested in the personality con­cerned at its earlier stages with its magnificent development.

My book "The Occult World" describing the circumstances under which I came into touch with the great Adept Master from whom I afterwards ob­tained the teaching which enabled me to write my later book - "Esoteric Buddhism" - will probably be familiar to all who may be readers of these pages. In any case it will not be worth while for me to repeat that narrative in the course of my present writing. As I approach the period to which it relates, I may have to refer to it again bui first let me deal with the earlier years of my present incarnation .

The many painful experiences of these earlier years, however, will assume a clearer meaning for the occult student ; if the story I have to tell is prepared by some account of former incarnations through which I have passed . I do not profess to remember these, but , all occult students are aware , that it is possible for persons adequately provided with psychic faculties, not merely to recover recollection of their own past lives, but to identify in the past those whom they know in the current life and thus to trace the progress through evolution of others besides themselves. The broad facts indeed relating to three lives of mine, preceding this one , were communicated to me long ago by the great Master from whom, under the circumstances detailed in "The Occult World" I derived the teaching embodied in that and other books of a similar character. They have been observed since, by advanced occult students qualified for such investigations and amplified in many ways. With such help as that last referred to, I have picked up much fragmentary inform­ation concerning lives far further back in the past than those the Karma of

which is plainly observable in my present life, but it is only necessary, in con- 2

nection with my present purpose, to deal with two among several lives preced ing this which is still in progress as I write.

Reading over this record in 1914 it seems desirable to add here that since it was written I have learned that I had a later incarnation than the two re­ferred to, in the Elizabethian period when I was known as Sir John Spencer, a wealthy merchant, honoured with the close friendship of Francis Bacon. A few facts concerning the · Spencer life are given in the Dictionary of National Biography, but it was not very closely related to my occult progress and back­slidings, so it was not dealt with by the Master K. H. when he first told me of my Roman and Egyptian lives.

Some 4,000 years ago I was living in Egypt, -chiefly in Memphis -and was attached, in a capacity, which I suppose I must call that of a priest, -though the expression is not attractive to my imagination, - to one of the Temples. Although in those days, no flood of knowledge on the subject had been poured out for the benefit of the public at large as has been done in our own time, the existence of that knowledge we now call the Higher Occultism was generally recognised. And during the life I am referring to I had already become alive to the importance of attempting to ascend "the Path" - to use our modem phrase, -and had, indeed, attained important occult initiations, involving vows of devotion to further spiritual progress. But a powerful emotion of another kind interrupted that progress. I was carried away by the overwhelming force of a great love. I now know that the woman who was the object of that love, has been associated with me in various ways in many lives. For her sake, in the Egyptian life under notice, I disregarded the vows I had taken. As I must speak of her again if this story is to have any value for the reader, let me give her an imaginary name and call her Vera.

I do not gather that I had even temporary happiness in that Egyptian life commensurate with the sacrifice I had made in its pursuit but Karmically the effect was extraordinary. As I read the course of events, I can have had no evil karma much worth speaking of, behind me at that date . Now as occult students are aware, Nature,- the Karmic law, gives us what we desire if we do not put impediments in the way by misdeeds incompatible with the realis­ation of our desire. In the Egyptian life I plainly showed what my supreme desire was, - for happiness, that is to say, the enjoyment of Vera's love. The broken vow had to do with my spiritual progress and the Karma of that act did not work out in relation with worldly conditions. It has manifested itself since, variously enough, but it did not stand in the way of my supreme desire. So in my next life (again I must append a note -I have since learned that I had other Egyptian lives before the Roman period, but the general drift of

2

the above narrative does not need much correction) I was incarnated in 3a

Rome, - in the first Century A. D. - with all the favours of fortune around me , - wealth and high rank amongst them, - and with Vera (in her then cur-rent incarnation) as my wife .

It is not my purpose now to go into details concerning this life, even to the limited extent to which my information might enable me to do so. Enough to say that with every condition around me calculated to give free play to every selfish impulse, I made what is technically called bad Karma, in remarkable abundance. I do not understand that I was in any way prey to the degrading excesses that disgraced the period so generally, but the pursuit of worldly pleasure was evidently my main occupation, involving amongst many consequences I can but dimly associate with the past, as I look back from the very different experience of the present life, - infidelity to Vera of a pro­nounced order. I gather that I very sincerely loved her but other attachments I formed seem to have offended her bitterly.

It was from this Roman life, having the character I have described - (if I may treat the Elizabethian life as an interlude dealing with a totally distinct stream of Karma) that I was tossed by a relentless law into the manifold trouble of the life now drawing to a close. ·

Friends who think of me merely as the privileged exponent of occult teaching have no knowledge of the dreary hardships I went through in my earlier life.

I am given to understand that my grandfather was a fairly prosperous physician who came to grief fmancially by gambling, - the fashionable pur­suit of the period. His several sons were left to sink or swim as fate might determine. My father seems to have relied -in his efforts to swim - on journal­ism and literature. He was married in 1825 to my mother Jane Fry of whose life I know very little. He died in the year 1844 being then, as I understand, about 45, leaving my mother and her family totally unprovided for. I was the youngest of the family being then about 5 years old. The 18th of January 1840 was my birthday. I have no exact record of the time. My wife who studied astrology profoundly made it out to have been about 10.30 or 10.45 p.m. I know it was in the course of the late evening.

There were several of us. The eldest, Julia, seems to have been a girl of wonderful promise, with poetic gifts but she died quite young soon after my father's death: The next, Sophia, lived to an advanced age - spending many years in bed. Her talents as an artist were conspicuous, but she surrendered to ill health and left off painting before achieving any recognised success. My brother Frederick developed lung disease in early manhood; went to Australia, was fairly successful as a journalist and died about the year 1866

3

or 7. The next child, my sister Ellen (still living as I write) struggled through 4

early girlhood as a governess but, still young, married very well and prosper­ously Edward Ellis, son of the well-known educational philanthropist William Ellis . She had a daughter and several sons, - all doing well in the world. The family name has been changed from Ellis to De Vesain, to which it is rightfully entitled, as that was originally the name of the family in France .

All occult students are aware that we do not come into incarnation singly or without reference to the ties and associates of former lives. But though later enquiry has enabled me to identify a considerable number of my con­temporaries in this life as having been friends and relations of former lives , the current relationship of parent and child, brother and sister and so on, has no necessary origin in the past. Thus as far as I have been able to ascertain there were no Karmic ties attaching me to the family in which I was born in this life . My own Karma, I suppose , claimed an incarnation of a painful order and certainly the necessary suffering, on that assumption, was amply provided for by the circumstances of my environment.

My mother's literary talents and indefatigable industry provided - just provided , bread and shelter for the family during my childhood and boyhood. My eldest sisters at the earliest possible age contributed to their support by work as governesses, but my recollections of that period are reflections of the continual gnawing anxiety about money that my mother was prey to. I was put to some cheap schools in the neighbourhood in which we lived, -Camden and Kentish Town and vaguely remember being very miserable , partly as a consequence of my own timidity of character , the result, I sup­pose, of my feminine up-bringing, which made me the butt of boyish bullying from my school-fellows. Then it came to pass that I was sent to the London University School in Gower Street, an 'exhibition' as it was called having been procured in my favour - an arrangement by which I was admitted to the school without the payment of the usual fees . This was obtained through the intervention of my aunt, Miss Sarah Fry , who had been giving lessons as governess in the family of Mr. Key, the Head Master of the school.

The arrangement was not much of a success and did not last many years . I got on fairly well with the elementary mathematical classes and with French but was incapable of doing well in my Latin class and continually in trouble on that account.

My extra-school life at this period was slightly brightened by the kind­ness of the sisters of John Stuart Mill. My mother was acquainted with the family and we often visited them, - in Kensington Square. Thus !-actually remember John Stuart Mill's mother,- which from the present date seems looking back a long way. I remember when 12 years old, - going with one of

4

the Miss Mill's to see the Duke of Wellington's funeral from the garden of s Marlborough House - not a royal residence at that time but a public building used for various offices.

My brief school career came to an end in this way. I had conceived a profound dislike of the Latin Master, and one morning was silly enough to write some abusive words about him in chalk on the blackboard of the mathe­matical class room. I was identified , as the boys were all questioned, and I told no lie about it, I am glad to say . Then I was had up before the head master and given a task -learning 500 lines of Latin and to be locked up every day till it was done. The discipline of the school was carried on without any kind of corporal punishment.

After a few days spent in the lock-up from my arrival at the school in the morning till the late afternoon, and without making any headway in the ap­pointed task , my mother withdrew me from the school altogether and set me on work congenial to my tastes, - the work of mechanical drawing. All my instincts at this time gravitated towards engineering but there was no money behind me to give me a legitimate start in that profession. To begin as a mechanical draughtsman was my only chance. I soon acquired fair skill in that line and through the intervention of Miss Mills was taken on as a sort of unpaid apprentice in the drawing office of certain patent agents in Iincoln's Inn Fields, - I was not very generously dealt with as from the first I was doing the same work as the elder and properly paid draughtsmen and again I re­member this period as a very unhappy time . The head draughtsman disliked me as he had apparently looked forward when my engagement was arranged , to having, in me, an office boy who would be at his disposal for any errands he might send me on. I rebelled against this view of the situation and the head partner of the firm took my part in the matter, but the disagreeable strain, day by day, was not much alleviation though eventually I was granted the munificent salary of ten shillings a week.

Later on, - as a thoroughly competant mechanical draughtsman, I got properly paid employment in some other offices and was then at last en­abled to provide in a measure for my own support and to relieve the strain on my poor mother's slender earnings.

Turning back now to the period of my own childhood , this seems an ap­propriate moment for attempting to give the reader some clearer view of my mother' s remarkable personality. If she had had fair play I fully believe that she would have made a great name in literature. The only book of import­ance that she was enabled in her forlorn widowhood to write,- her "Byways of History", - attracted attention but the dire necessity of earning bread for her children forbade the idea of further original work and she struggled on

5

with translations and any magazine writing for which she could win a few s pounds all through the wretched time of my childhood. She must have had some remnant of money from my father's time to carry her on during the preparation of the "Byways" as she went over to Germany taking me, her · small child, with her, and stayed for a while collecting material at Frankfurt. My recollections of this period are of course of the faintest . Defmite memor-ies begin later when we were living in a little house in Kentish Town .

I still have in my possession some old diaries kept by my mother during this period. They are mere fragments, giving no connected story of her life. I cannot always make out where they were written, and they deal more with states of feeling than with events, so that they are very sad reading; for my mother's life , at the time was heavily overshadowed by sorrow and trouble of various kinds.

The earliest fragment I have , dated July 1849 must have been written at the little house where we then lived, in the Clarence Road, Kentish Town. My mother , I know, used to supplement her scanty literary earnings by giving daily governess lessons in various families . She writes under the above date:­"Just returned, dull and wearied from Ward's lessons. Formerly if I only went out for a walk when I returned a kind husband and all my children running to meet me. Now, no one takes the slightest notice -no eye gladdens- no one moves from their seat (except sometimes Alfy) yet I am doing my best- and it would be so sweet to hear a few kind words. How long - - - - - - - - - - -"

There the passage ends, and the next entry is dated about a week later -My own recollections do not illuminate the situation. As for myself I can distinctly remember being very fond of my mother, and this seems recognised in some parts of her diaries, but I can realise, looking back, that the comfort­lessness of the position in which the whole family found itself tended to make all of them gloomy , fractious and discontented in a way that would have been quite incompatible with a continuance of the former domestic atmosphere.

Under date August 5 my mother wrote :-"Sitting in my own room listening to the sound of the music at the

Church, I should be glad to attend the service and take the children, but the other day we heard such atrocious and injurious stuff from the clergyman, about a man being struck dead as a punislunent for selling ginger beer on Sunday , that I really fear I should be doing more harm than good if I insisted on their going. God knows it is by no indifference or disrespect to the humblest religious form that I am kept away from public worship.

"I take shame to myself for not having studied more , the philosophy of Berkeley, -believing as I do that his system is true and if true surely of great

6

importance. How so purely spiritual a "Doctrine can be supposed to tend to 9.

Atheism" is to me inconceivable. I must endeavour to remedy my neglect. A little more than a month later she goes on:-"Somewhere, -I believe in some Catholic book of devotion- I have seen

the expression "the gift of tears". The expression to those who have never felt the want seems affected. Yet how true it is. I could, this afternoon, have returned thanks for a hearty fit of crying it was so great a relief, and to me so rare . I have not this gift. The 'stifled, dreary, unimpassioned grief, is my habitual state, but with these tears all the bitterness in my heart seemed to flow away."

The next fragment is more cheerful in tone . - and yet pathetic in the retrospect. It needed so little to brighten my poor struggling mother's spirits, that the rarity of such gleams makes the faint sketch of her life, -which is all I can furnish, -a very melancholy record.

Towards the end of October still in the same year 1849, she writes :-"It is long since I have written anything. Much of the time has been very

dreary, but now I have to record gratefully that the house has been more cheerful and hope seems again , I scarcely know how, to have dawned upon me. I have weathered the most trying month of the year (in a pecuniary sense) when in addition to other expenses the insurance on my life has to be paid. I have also been able to buy some new clothes for myself and the child­

ren. How the rich ones would smile to think of what pleasure it gave me to do so. I could have said grace over every article. This may be childish but I do not care. Pleasure of any kind is so unwonted a guest that I welcome it on any terms. The article in the "Dublin Review" has been paid for at last but it was less than half what I expected - only £5.18s., and that put me out very much."

For long after this the entries in the journal at irregular intervals are all in the melancholy vein. At the end of one describing a very dreary home life destitute of the affectionate sympathy for which the writer so pitiously craved, I am glad to find one little reference to my small self- "There is only my poor little boy - God bless him, I do hear a kind word from him some­times."

An entry on the lst of January 1850 is almost sadder than usual: "Gladly would I greet the new year with something of hope - or at least

of good resolutions but my mind is all chaos with nothing distinct but the sense of pain. I grope in vain for some firm religious faith that might be a refuge in the wreck of all else ... My earnings for the last year have been but £105 even with the favourable chances of the last three months, - "Sharpe's Magazine", -which will now cease ..... "

7

"I will write no more of this heavy day (Jan . 4) I don't know how people 11

feel when they are going mad but I think sometimes this restless chaos of miserable thought will end in that."

The later entries are many months apart . As conducive to a study of human character they would be well worth printing in extenso, but the main purpose of this compilation I am engaged upon is incompatible with such a course. Looking at my mother's unhappy life as a whole it is a wonderful illustration of the supremacy of worldly circumstances. Her writings of all kinds show her to have been a woman of quite exceptional literary talent and of unusual mental culture. Her fragmentary diary shows her to have been of an intensely emotional nature, - had she been endowed with anything re­sembling fortune she must have been brilliantly successful both in literature and social life . Her craving for affection would have secured a rich response, if she had been able to give anything in return. Crushed by sordid cares she was condemned to spend her ceaseless industry in hack-work for publishers and magazines, and to waste her strength as a daily governess for children. Ella Wheeler Wilcox's cynical verse "Laugh and the world laughs with you; Weep and you weep alone," never had a more vivid illustration than in the sad story I cannot pause to tell at full length now.

Shortly after my sister Ellen was married (in 1855) efforts were set on foot by certa,in friends with the view of getting my mother a Civil Service pension, in recognition of her literary works and urgent necessities. For some reasons I never fully understood the Ellis family disapproved of the idea and in consideration of the abandonment generously arranged to give my mother an allowance of £100 a year. This of course put an end to the agonising struggle reflected in the journals from which I have quoted.

Matters drifted on till I was about 19. By that time I had begun to de­velop a disposition to write. I had formed some opinions about the imper­fections of the Patent Laws and wrote a pamphlet on the subject which was published by Mr. Ridgway, then of Piccadilly. Mr. Ridgway had I believe known my father. He had influence with the "Globe" (evening newspaper) and procured me an appointment on the staff of the paper as assistant sub-editor.

This represented a great improvement on my condition. I had a salary of £3 a week and soon made friends with my immediate chief Mr. J. Herbert Stack. In every way this was a very important turning point in my career. I was still living with my mother iri various lodgings, but became acquainted with many of Mr. Stack's friends and my intimacy with him ripened to a very close attachment. J . C. O'Dowd was on the staff of the "Globe" and Mr. Stack and I used sometimes to spend a Sunday on the river at Kingston .

8

Thest:: were very enjoyable experiences for me. Then the Volunteer movement ta began and three of us, Stack, myself and Mr. George Hooper, also on the staff of the "Globe" joined the South Middlesex Corps commanded by Lord Ranelagh . After drills we would sometimes have an evening meal at Hooper's (Bedford Gardens, Kensington) and on one such evening I met there,- Vera!

She was of German birth, with a glorious contralto voice and had come to England with a view to making her way as a concert singer. I followed up the acquaintance. It chanced that owing to the indifference to such things of the "Globe" editor (Wilson) theatre and opera tickets were very abundant in the sub-editor's room and I had a liberal share of these. I was thus enabled to take Vera frequently to the Opera, -then in its prime, Grisi and Marco were singing at Covent Garden; Titiens and Guiglini at Her Majesty's. Of course I was in love with Vera almost from the first and used sometimes to visit her in the evening. I declared myself on one of these occasions and was accepted.

She was living at the time in very agreeable lodging close to St. John's Wood Church. I think she was really very fond of me, but did not at once realise the hopelessness of my prospects. The engagement dragged on for some months of delirious happiness, my eyel' dosed to the future . I was with her constantly. My mother of course deplored the arrangement.

Vera's father was a pastor at Hamburg . He came over on · a visit to England during our engagement and of course disapproved of it altogether but Vera was independent in all ways and led me to think she would be true to me, but looking back on little indications to which I did not attach adequate significance at the time, I feel that she was drifting into a conviction that the tie had to be broken.

It would be impossible for me to exaggerate the intensity of my love for her. It came to pass that she in turn had to pay a visit to her father in Hamburg. I accompanied her on the journey as far as Calais and parted from her at the train next morning.

I got back to London living in the hope ofletters from her. None came. Weeks elapsed and the agony of that period of suspense is again a condition of suffering I can hardly exaggerate. In my despair at last I telegraphed to her father asking for news of her. From him I received a letter (in German that I could not read properly) informing me that she had abandoned all thoughts of keeping up the engagement.

I had become, by this time , intimate with a very remarkable man of German origin Otto von Wenkstern. To him I went with the letter and he interpreted it for me fully. His wise sympathy did not take any common place form. On the contrary he told me "This will colour your whole life". It has done so.

9

Herbert Stack soon after this had somehow fallen into ill-favour with the 14

proprietors of the "Globe". I do not remember details, but I think he had become neglectful of his work at the office, by reason of a love affair with a married woman which engrossed his interest for the time . Anyhow he was dis­missed and I was for a time sub-editor. But somehow I failed to give satis­faction. Perhaps my miserable state of mind impaired my efficiency and after a time I too was told that my services were no longer required .

I was, over and above my "Globe" work, writing leading articles for the "Morning Chronicle", but the paper came to grief and was discontinued.

Herbert Stack had meanwhile obtained an Editorship of the "Birmingham Daily Gazette". There I recognised him and he got me work on the paper for a time. I forgot the circumstances under which that came to an end but I went on to Manchester to fulfil a temporary engagement as a leader writer on the "Manchester Guardian". After this I came back to London in the course of the year 1864.

I was very hard up for a time. During this period I went in September 1864 to Sweden as special correspondent for the "Daily News" and while on that trip met Major Massy, special correspondent for the "Standard", - the father of a large family with which, -later on my return from abroad , I came eventually to be on terms of close and pleasant intimacy.

I remained without any regular employment or income after my return from Sweden through the greater part of the following year and the gloom of my external circumstances enhanced the interior misery of my condition, -for several years passed before the longing for my lost love was even lessened from its first intensity .

In June 1865 I went as correspondent for the "Daily Telegraph" to Valencia on the west coast of Ireland on board the "Great Eastern", then set­ting out on her first Atlantic cable laying expedition . There was an interesting scientific party on the ship, including Professor Thomson as he was then , -afterwards Lord Kelvin . I might have remained on as a permanent special cor­respondent of the "Daily Telegraph" but I was offered the editorship of the "Hong Kong Daily Press" and the prospect of a complete change involved in a migration to China, - which I vainly hoped might turn my thoughts from my interior trouble, - determined me to accept the appointment. In October 1865 I sailed for Hong Kong -in a P. & 0. boat from Southampton. I con­trived to see the Pyramids on my way through Egypt. In those days passen­gers arriving from England waited a few days at Cairo till the Suez steamer was ready.

My Hong Kong appointment was a turning point in my worldly career. During the three years I stayed in the Colony, I saved some seven or eight

10

hundred pounds and came home in 1868 via Japan and America, crossing the 16

Continent by coach , - the railway at that time in its westerly growth having only reached the Missouri.

Of the three years at Hong Kong I need not say much. The community was a plutocracy of merchants. I passed the time outside my work (in which I was fairly successful) in card playing, -which was the main amusement of the set into which I drifted, - but in all my gambling of which I have been inord­inately fond at various periods I have never lost my self-<:ontrol in presence of bad luck . I have lost and won and I am quite unable to say at this moment, whether on the whole the account has inclined in one direction or the other.

On my way across the American continent I had for travelling compan­ion a certain Dr. Bourne and a young man named Abdy . but I have entirely lost sight of them since . I stayed en route for some ten days at the Mormon settlement, Salt Lake City, then entirely in the hands of the Mormons and made friends with some of them, besides having an interview with Brigham Young.

The impression I formed concerning the Mormons were widely at variance with those prevalent at the time in the United States. The people - then about 100,000 in the whole territory of Utah- were orderly , well-<:onducted and in­dustrious to an extraordinary degree. In the town of Salt Lake City there was no vice or crime of any sort - young girls could pass along the streets late in the evening from visits and amusements without the faintest risk of molest­ation. There was no drinking saloon in the whole town and as for the much talked of polygamy it played a very small part in the social life of the community . It was only the Elders of the Church , who to uphold the theory, married more women than one ,and the notion calumniously circulated in the States and Europe to the effect that the system was due to licentious passion was ludicrol}sly out of keeping with the facts .

We ultimately reached New York via Niagara and I returned almost im­mediately to London.

The ftrst old friend I saw was Henry Stack, brother of my great friend Herbert Stack and he told me of a family they, -himself and Herbert, had lately made aquaintance with and were greatly charmed with,- the Edensors. I was to be introduced to them at the earliest opportunity. There is signific­ance in the fact that I then heard of them at the ftrst moment of my return from abroad. I had been, - especially during the voyage home,- impressed with the feeling that to go on indefmitely bemoaning my lost love would be a kind of madness . I tried to cut myself off from that terrible episode, by col­lecting all the letters of Vera's still in my possession and a portrait of her and throwing them overboard in the middle of the Paciftc. I determined that the

1 1

only thing for me to do was to get married and the mysterious agencies that 1 7

control our lives, lost no time in putting me on the right track leading to that result.

I was at once very favourably struck with the youngest of the three Edensor sisters, - Patience whom I ultimately married . I may as well say at once that I know now as I write more than forty years later , that this union was the fulfllment of long established Karmic ties of which, I had not the faintest suspicion at the time . I have been assured on the highest authority that had my early desire been fulfilled my touch with the Occult World would have been deferred for many lives. My marriage with Pattie,- as I al­ways called her, -gave rise to sublime consequences from the occult point of view, but of these I will write later on.

It is difficult to describe the earlier years of our married life so as faith­fully to reflect the course of events, when I am impressed by recent know­ledge with overwhelming admiration for the loftier attributes of my dear wife's character, which , since her passing over from this life , have culminated in spiritual achievement the splendour of which defies complete comprehen­sion in the physical brain . But the earlier years were not without their shadows, - as must always be the case when strong physical passion on the man's side meets with no adequate response. But I must not exaggerate the depth of these shadows - in many ways our companionship was enjoyable even before it was enobled by our later spiritual progress.

Before my marriage I shared lodgings in various places about London with Henry Stack and soon got into touch with the "Standard" -then under the editorship of Captain Hamber. I wrote descriptive correspondence relating to my journey home and before long made good my footing as a leader writer Then I obtained a permanent appointment on the staff of the paper, and for years wrote all the leading notes for the "Evening Standard". This arrange­ment seemed to afford reasonable justification for my marriage which took place on the 6th of April, 1870, at St. John's Church, Notting Hill. We went via Folkstone to Paris for our honeymoon.

My wife very soon began to keep a diary, a record of events which any­body might read, not a private diary of thoughts and feelings, and she kept this up all through our married life so that it now consists of 31 volumes of manuscript , by reference to which it is possible for me to be accurate in deal­ing with dates and incidents as they developed , to an extent that would have been quite impossible if I had merely my memory to rely on.

We had already taken, in advance of our wedding, a little house, 15, Ladbroke Grove where we settled down on or very soon after our return from Paris.

12

My mother, I fmd by a brief record in the diary, died on the 13th of 19

November 1870. Her very grey life had a distressing conclusion as she had a stroke of paralysis which enfeebled her once brilliant intelligence as well as her body .

My wife's eldest sister Joan, had by this time married Mr. Clement Redfern , and our wedding breakfast had taken place at the house where they were living in the Tregunter Road. Later on they moved to a house in the main Bayswater Road near us. Our evenings were frequently spent there, at our house or at Herbert Stack's house in Holland Villas Road, all of us meet­ing for card playing of which at that time we were exceedingly fond. Poker, which I had introduced from China, was our favourite game, -so the time passed for a year or two not unpleasantly but rather aimlessly.

In August 1871 , when I had a month's holiday from the office, Pattie and I went for a tour abroad - first to Spa, in Belgium (Attracted by the public gambling then going on there). Both of us shared the same taste for this pursuit but neither of us were ever in the least degree in danger of losing our heads in connection with it - In a small way we sometimes lost and some­times won. The net results were insignificant. From Spa we went via Cologne and the Rhine to Switzerland, Thun, Interlaken, Murren, Lucerne and thence home via Ostende - a very enjoyable trip .

I had long been impressed with the belief that the only way of doing really well in journalism was by getting a good editorial appointment in India. The offer of such an appointment came in my way in the middle of 1872. I was offered the editorship of the "Pioneer" by Mr. George Alien, the pro­prietor then in London - and accepted it, resigning my engagement on the "Standard". We set out for India in November 1872 via Paris, Turin (through the Monte Cenis Tunnel) Milan and Venice. On the 15th went on board the P. & 0 . steamer "Malta" and in her to Alexandria ; across the Isthmus by train (this was before the opening of the Canal) then on by the "Pekin" to Bombay. A tedious railway journey which then lasted 36 hours brought us at last to our destination Allahabad. As the house that had been taken for us was not ready we were hospitably entertained for a few days by Mr. and Mrs. Warner. Then we got our own quarters, - very uncomforable at first but we settled down in a week or two - and then began a period of life it is hardly worth while for me now to attempt to describe in detail. On the whole we enjoyed it. There was a great deal of gaiety , dining out and so forth which we found pleasant ; afternoon garden parties chiefly devoted to the game of Badminton , almost every day; a sense of ease in money matters was an agreeable change to our previous narrower circumstances.

As the hot weather came Allahabad was to a great extent deserted, the

13

Government officials of the North Western provinces, as our part of the 21

country was then called, migrated to Naini Tal, but we remained behind, bearing the hot weather more easily than the older residents. I had by this time got used to my work. It was not altogether plain sailing in the beginning as I was afflicted with a jealous and unscrupulous assistant, but subject to much friction, I got along fairly well.

The diary for this period is a protracted record of social pleasures. Our acquaintanceship came, in accordance with Anglo-lndian custom, to include nearly all residents in the station and from amongst these we gathered around us a rather brilliant little coterie,- Tyrrel, then registrar of the High Court and afterwards a judge, Carpenter a prominent civilian, George Ross a barrister, Jardine, the leading barrister, and later on Auckland Colvin then a settlement officer and John Elliott of the Educational Department, afterwards the distin­guished meteorologist We were able to entertain freely in a quiet way and I was told that our relatively humble menage came to be called "Uttle Holland House". One sad incident darkened the record of this period. Jardine had just been appointed a Judge of the High Court,- an honour which greatly de­lighted him. In celebration of the event he arranged a pleasure party to Mirzapore, borrowing a friend's house for the occasion. We spent a very en­joyable morning at a pretty place in the neighbourhood and on our way back I was riding with Jardine who began to suffer from acute abdominal pain. When we got back to Mirzapore he sent word that he would not come down to dinner but none of us suspected the severity of his seizure. He died of cholera during the night. The party broke up in great distress for he was a man to whom we were all cordially attached. This occurred during August 1873.

By degrees the absentees from Naini Tal began to dribble back into Allahabad and the usual life was resumed.

I had the right to a month's holiday each year but we saved up then with the view of indulging in a three month's trip home in the third year.

My wife's sister, Thomasine Edensor, came out to pay us a long visit to­wards the close of 1873.

In April 1875 we started on our trip home. The holiday was darkened by the death, almost immediately after we reached London, of my wife's eldest sister J oan.

During the visit home I was taken by a spiritualistic friend, Mr. Wiseman, to a seance at Mrs. Guppy's. The physical phenomena were overwhelming and precluded any conceivable theory of imposture. My conviction concerning the reality of spiritualistic phenomena was then ftrmly established and never shaken.

14

Mrs Guppy was then a widow, well off, and living in the Victoria Road, 22

Kensington, where she entertained her friends at seances and was good enough to allow me to come two or three times. She used to be spoken of in those d(!,ys as "the Empress of physical Mediums", and the title was certainly deserved.

We started on our return to India in July and stayed en route with the Massy family at Chaton near Paris , thence to Switzerland where we stayed a few days at Thun and Interlaken and other places, and so on to Geneva, Milan, and Bellagio on the lake of Como and fmally Venice, leaving for Alexandria in the P. & 0 . steamer "Kastigar". From Suez we went on the "Mongalia" and reached Allahabad in the beginning of August.

Mr., afterwards Sir John, Elliott had charge of the "Pioneer" during my absence ;

I do not fmd in the diary any record of especially interesting events dur­ing the cold weather of 1875-6. The usual routine of frequent dinner and garden parties seems to have been going on, but in April 1876 we went to Sirnla, as it was thought best that I should be there in touch with the Government carrying on the editorial work by post. Lord Lytton was now the Viceroy and by degrees my relations with him came to be of an extremely agreeable character. He found that he could trust me and became very out­spoken in discussing political events. For the rest the time was passed in the usual way with incessant social festivities. We returned to Allahabad in September.

In May 1877 at about 9 or 9.30 a.m. on the 16th May my wife gave birth to a boy after a terribly trying night. We spent this hot weather altogether at Allahabad, but no events of importance occurred till in the beginning of 1879 Mr. Alien sold the "Pioneer" to Mr. Rattegan and Mr. Walker already the proprietors of the Lahore paper, the "Civil and Military Gazette".

This arrangement annoyed me extremely, but it never occured to me at the time, that it might have been possible for me , as I was assured afterwards that it was , - to have borrowed the money for the purchase of the paper for myself from the Banks.

For a time the usual routine went on. I went to Lahore to see the new proprietors but never got on with them very well.

Now I approach the period of the great and momentous change in my life arising from my acquaintance with Madame Blavatsky and my introduc­tion to occultism.

Someone - Herbert Stack, I think, - had told me about Madame Blavatsky's book "Isis Unveiled" as opening up a new idea in advance of

-spiritualism,the actual reality of magic . Then I saw a statement in the Bombay

15

papers that she and Colonel Olcott had arrived in Bombay, and I wrote a note 24

about them in the "Pioneer" assuming that they were spiritualists coming to India in search of a new variety of mediumship. Apropos to this note Colonel Olcott wrote to me and we somehow made acquaintance by letter. We thought they would be interesting people and decided to ask them to pay us a visit if they were, - as I had gathered that they intended, - about to come up country. They came on the 4th of December 1879.

I can see plainly now how our invitation was prompted by my wife's initiation. We were out driving as usual one afternoon and talking ~bout all we had heard of Madame Blavatsky's revival of "magic" (so we supposed) a new development of spiritualism. My wife said , or in words to that effect, "How would it do if we asked her and her companion, Colonel Olcott , -to pay us a visit on their way up country". I know now of course, that the Masters were planning to bring us together and to enlist me in the work of in­augurating the Theosophical movement. My wife was more susceptible than I of a telepathic hint, and hence her suggestion. I fell in with it, though we both laughed over the risk we rail of ftnding the strange guests unsatisfactory in that capacity.

In general terms my book "The Occult World" records the evidences, - as matters turned out, that Madame Blavatsky gave us, of her abnormal powers and I do not propose in this narrative to repeat the contents of "The Occult World" . But I do deal here with some of the personal details which the book in question does not embody . And I vividly remember - as I write now more than 30 years later, -the morning on which I drove down quite early, some­thing like 7 o'clock to meet our guests at the railway station. In those days the train from Bombay came in about that time. Chota Hazri was ready in our veranda when we got home . My wife had not yet come out of her room though she did so a few minutes later, and Madame Blavatsky sat down with me at the table. Our conversation related to spiritualism and she asked me if we had been holding any seances. I said yes, but without the smallest success. We had never been able to get so much as a rap. She laughed and said it was so easy to get raps, laying her hand on the table it began at once in the bright morning light. This might, of course, have been set down to an extraordinary variety of mediumship on her part, but a 'Very little experience later on con­vinced us that the raps came in obedience to her own will and could be·made to talk any nonsense she chose to dictate to them. For the rest , as regards the phenomena associated with Madame Blavatsky's various visits to us, I refer the readers of this narrative to "the Occult World".

But I may explain here that we were very soon captivated by Madame Blavatsky's personality. Of course her manners were rugged, but in all cases it

16

was easy to see that this was by choice, - not the result of bad breeding. 2 5

She would often abuse and scold Colonel Olcott in a way that rather got on our nerves but there is no doubt about the fact that in the course of her visit , - which was protracted beyond the few days at first contemplated to several weeks, she endeared herself to us very decidedly. In some respects she was a very tiresome and unruly guest . For one thing she insisted on sitting up talking till very late hours , far beyond the time when we were longing to go to bed. We were too polite in those days to leave her alone which might have been the simplest course. And again quite in the beginning, in spite of raps, she so absurdly mismanaged some little exhibition of occult power, that we were chilled with serious doubt as to whether she was not at least half an im­postor. But we waited patiently for events , and by degrees these very reason­able suspicions were dispersed , and the interest of her conversation became more and more effective in confirming our attachment to her. Moreover she became the object of great interest for many of our friends at Allahabad and was frequently invited out with us to dinner parties, where her bright and often witty talk was cordially appreciated. At small dinner parties of chosen friends at our own house she would shine brilliantly. But all this time , though we were gradually picking up vague notions concerning "the Brothers" (as she used at that time to call the great Adepts of the White Lodge) we were not favoured with any striking phenomena, beyond the raps, - produced in all imaginable fashions.

Mr. A. 0. Hume with whom I afterwards had close relations at Simla was in Allahabad at the time of Madame Blavatsky's visit and took much interest in the ideas she represented . He took the chair on one occasion , when Colonel Olcott gave a lecture on Theosophy at the Mayo Hall .

In the middle of December Madame Blavatsky persuaded us rather against our inclination, to go with her to Colonel Olcott on a brief visit to Benares . The Vizaanagram Rajah had lent her a house where , in a detached bungalow at the end of the garden, the Swami Dyanano Saraswati was staying. Madame Blavatsky raised our expectations concerning him to a very high level , but they were disappointed , as he was either unable or unwilling to give us any manifestation of occult power.

We were lodged in the most extreme discomfort, and my temper at all events rather gave way under the strain . I had a stormy talk with Madame Blavatsky in the evening and we decided to go home at once next morning, but when the time came were overborne for the moment and consented to stay one day longer. We. -my wife and I, went home next day very glad to escape from the disagreeables of our stay.

In a few days Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott returned to us and

17

remained with us till the 30th when we saw them off. Their departure was 27

rendered stormy by a blaze of wrath on Madame Blavatsky's part directed against Colonel Olcott in connection with some trifle that had been left be­hind and our feelings were of a very mixed order, -of regret and relief, -as we bade them good bye.

We spent the hot weather of 1880 at Sirnla and towards the close of the season had another visit from Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott. They arrived on the 8th of September and this time Madame Blavatsky began to give us new phenomena, - the astral bells and others though not at once of a very thrilling order. At this time, we were living in a house called "Bright­lands", just over the Mall.

At a date about this time that I cannot identify my correspondence with Mahatma K H. began. I remember that the idea of attempting to get into personal communication with one of "the Brothers" arose in the course of conversation one morning at breakfast. I had been, good-humouredly,- fmd­ing fault with Madame Blavatsky's indiscretion in the management of her society's affairs and said I was sure that if I could get into touch with "the Brothers" themselves I should fmd them better endowed with practical com­mon sense . Would they, did Madame Blavatsky think, consent in some way to answer a l~tter if I wrote one addressed to them? She did not seem to think that this would be impossible, so I wrote accordingly addressing my letter to 'an unknown Brother" - and now I must refer the reader to "The Occult World" for detailed information concerning the correspondence that ensued.

This it was that enabled me to write the book entitled ''The Occult World" which as a matter of fact was mainly written at sea, during our next visit to England.

After our return to Allahabad Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott came to us again on a short visit and in March 1881 my wife and I went home on our second holiday to England. We went this time via Calcutta where Mr. Elliott was now settled, thence by P. & 0. via Ceylon etc. We landed at Marseilles, went for a short visit to Monte Carlo, (where I lost the moderate amount I had made up my mind to risk- but no more) then to the Massy's at Chaton from whom we had a warm welcome. Owing to illness my wife had to stay on here while I went on to London. As soon as she was well enough my wife came on and joined her mother and sister a1 a hydropathic establishment at Norwood while I took lodgings in Down Street. My wife I should explain was looking forward at the time to a second confmement, but she was able still to come frequently to town and go with us to theatres and other places of amusement. My leave expiring, however, obliged me to return to India in the beginning of June and I had to leave my wife behind at Norwood, but

18

towards the end of the month she went into a house her mother had taken at 29

34 Royal Crescent, Notting Hill. It must have been during this period, and while I was staying at Down

Street that, at Lady Pelly's request, - I gave a drawing room lecture at her house, 1 Eaton Square, on the Theosophical development. An influential audience had been collected and I gave what must have been a very imperfect sketch on Reincarnation, the Masters, and the teaching as I then understood it. But a considerable effect must have been produced, as for years after people would speak to me of either having been at that lecture or of having heard of it from friends who were present.

I meanwhile had joined Francis Massy at Paris and we arranged a little tour together tending in the direction of Venice whence I had to embark for India. We went to Vienna and Budapesth and enjoyed it very much.

On my arrival at Bombay I stayed with Madame Blavatsky for a few days and the day after my arrival, if I remember rightly, received apparently in a phenomenal manner, a long letter from K. H. congratulating me on the publication of "The Occult World" which had been brought out during my stay in London. The letter I believe to have been genuine, but have a grave suspicion as to the manner in which it reached me. It dropped on the table before me while I was sitting with Madame Blavatsky and may have been pushed from above through a slit in the beams of the ceiling, by M. Coulomb, as he afterwards declared to have been the case. Certainly his word was worth nothing but Madame Blavatsky was capable sometimes of these marvellous indiscretions, contributing a bit of trickery to embellish some genuine manif­estation. Conventional judgement, when she was guilty of some such folly and detected or suspected in connection with it , would sweep aside all she said and did as untrustworthy, but my knowledge of the undeniable reality of the phenomena I had witnessed at Simla and elsewhere was proof against the influence of such indiscretions on her part as I have just referred to.

Looking over the M. S. of this book several years after it was first written it seems to me worth while to add a note on the subject of the incident just referred to. In later years I have had several opportunities of getting into touch with Madame Blavatsky now on "the other side". On one occasion I asked her frankly "Why did you play that fool's trick on me at Bombay about the dropped letter?". Her answer was "That was not me at all. A black magician was occupying my body." "Good Heavens" I said "Couldn't you take measures to prevent that sort of thing, if you had to go away?", "Oh yes" she said, "but I was careless sometimes". In one way the explanation covered the mystery but left me thinking about the serious aspect of such carelessness, and later on I had an opportunity of asking the Master K. H.

19

what he thought of it. His answer -gentle and kindly as usual, -was to the ao effect that Madame Blavatsky was always conscious of the storms continually raging around her, - ferocious black attacks and powerful white defence. If under the circumstances she sometimes lost her head, that was hardly surpris-ing.

At all events the letter received at Bombay was the beginning of the voluminous correspondence which ultimately enabled me to write "Esoteric Buddhism".

Soon after my return to Allahabad I had telegrams from home announc­ing my wife's confmement on the 14th July. The child was born dead owing to strange complications in the delivery.

I went up to Sirnla for a part of the remaining hot weather but I have no record of my doings at this period and can only trust my memory. My wife's diary relates to her own doings at home . It must however have been on this visit to Sirnla that I met and escorted Madame Blavatsky up the Tonga road, then the only available mode of travel and we both stayed for a considerable time with Mr. Hume. Up to this time Mr. Hume, then one of the Secretaries to the Government of India had been ardently interested in the theosophical movement, wrote pamphlets on the subject and had himself a good deal of correspondence with the "Masters" (as we were gradually learning to call them). But Madame Blavatsky's visit to him was not productive of happy results. Perhaps it was to some extent his fault as he was of a domineering character and quite without the docility which in the beginning seems a necessary condition of occult progress; no doubt Madame Blavatsky's aggrav­ating peculiarities, had something to do with the trouble that arose, but any­how the relations of the two became very strained .

I was back in Allahabad when my wife returned to India and stayed for a few days at Bombay with Madame Blavatsky. I was induced to go to Bombay for a day in connection with some complications in the Society there of no real importance and returned with my wife in the beginning of January 1882. No events of any striking importance took place during the next few months, and in April we went up to Sirnla and took up our residence at a house called the Tendrills where we were ultimately joined by Colonel and Mrs. Gordon forming a joint household.

In the course of June some trouble arose between myself and Mr. Rattegan, the principal proprietor of the "Pioneer" at this date. He wished me to return to Allahabad, by reason of some dissatisfaction with the arrange­ments there. I refused, holding on to my rights, as I understood them to carry on my work from Sirnla during the hot weather. I have no written record to guide me in describing the circumstances and am rather under the impression

20

that it would have been better if I had acquiesced in the proposed return to 32

Allahabad . Anyhow the incident was the beginning of strained relations be­tween myself and the new proprietors which ultimately led to the termination of my connection with the "Pioneer", although I gather from my wife's diary - my unaided recollection being at fault, -that in July I decided to give in and go back to Allahabad. Preparations for the return journey had been made but a telegram from Mr. Rattegan announced that some arrangements had been made which would relieve me from the necessity of going down.

During all this season I was in active correspondence with the Master K.H. - his letters conveying the teaching that was ultimately worked up in "Esoteric Buddhism" . Mr. Hume also received many letters, although, as I gathered afterwards, his attitude of mind was not held by the Masters to be at all promising.

We formed a branch of the Society called "the Simla Eclectic Theosoph­ical Society" of which I was president but it was not destined to any long protracted existence .

In the beginning of October we had a visit from two Chelas, wearing the yellow robe, - the leader giving his name as Darbagiri Nath and telling me about his residence at the Master K. H.'s house in Tibet. Some mystery never satisfactorily cleared up attended this incident. Madame Blavatsky then at Darjeeling seemed to have Darbagiri Nath with her a day or two after he had been with me at Simla, - the time being quite insufficient for the ordinary physical plane journey between the two places . But it ultimately seemed · clear that her little man and mine were two different persons though she allowed us to remain for a long while under the impression that they were one and the same .

We had taken to vegetarianism during the period, on humanitarian grounds, influenced more by Mrs . Kingsford's writings on the subject, than by any idea that it would promote our theosophical progress, and we gave a rather famous vegetarian dinner party that was a good deal talked about at the time. Major Kenny Herbert, who made cooking his hobby, was good enough to take charge of all the arrangements for the dinner which was highly successful though very costly. So the time sped on , an endless succession of social gaieties. We left Simla for Allahabad towards the end of October mak­ing a very uncomfortable journey, by reason of reaching Gieziabad too late to catch the train down country. We had to spend the night in quarters properly inhabited by a railway guard, absent on du~y that night, as there was only one train a day, down country. Madame Blavatsky came to stay with us very soon after our return, and it was during this visit that I obtained certain portraits of the Master K.H. referred to in "The Occult World".

21

In November Mr. Rattegan gave me notice that he wished to terminate 34

my editorial engagement. Various negotiations followed. A scheme was devel­oped , according to which I was to start a new paper in rivalry with the "Pioneer". Its name was even settled . It was to be called "The Phoenix" and efforts were made to obtain the necessary capital from some of the great Indian Rajahs. "The Pioneer" proprietors were fairly liberal in their fmal pecuniary settlement with me , though at this distance of time I cannot quote figures , nor do I remember how far certain agreements as to the scope of the proposed new paper did not enter into the arrangements made. Anyhow when we left India the paper project was still alive though it was never destined to fulftlment.

It was my attachment to theosophy -which the new proprietors of "The Pioneer" resented , - that was mainly operative, I believe, in giving rise to their desire to get rid of me . The difficulty at Simla about my reluctance to return to Allahabad in the middle of the Simla season had something to do with it no doubt , but my theosophical attachments were a more important factor in the whole business.

We were on our part, by no means reluctant to make the change , whether the new paper should be started or not. We had grown very tired of the Anglo-Indian life of empty and frivolous gaiety and I thought I saw my way, in any case to a possible life in England. I had, -reckoning the money what­ever it was that came to me in the fmal settlement accumulated about £8,000. I was fairly sure of being able to supplement the income to be derived from this money by journalistic work at home and we regarded the uncertainty attaching to the prospect of "The Phoenix", with no particular anxiety .

On the 9th February 1883 I was entertained at a farewell dinner at the Club . About 40 men were present and Mr. Douglas Straight, then one of the High Court Judges , was in the chair. The following evening, the lOth, a private dinner party in our honour was given by Mr. and Mrs. Sinkinson.

On the 11th we left Allahabad for Calcutta on our way to Madras where Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott were now settled in a house at Adyar, presented to them by some rich and sympathetic Indian friend . At Calcutta we stayed with Mr. Holdemess and Mr. W. W. Hunter who then chummed to­gether. I had a pleasant farewell interview with Lord Ripon, then the Viceroy, who to my great surprise, did not anticipate any great excitement and oppos­ition in reference to the bill just launched. Most of us were sure it would be intensely resented by the European community. Lord William Beresford, then on the Viceroy's staff lent me, during our stay at Calcutta a viceregal1aunch in which we took a party of friends up to Barrackpore for a picnic.

We went on by sea to Madras and stayed at Adyar with Madame

22

Blavatsky arriving on the 2nd March. I was closely engaged during this visit 3 5

with writing "Esoteric Buddhism~'. Subba Rao had been instructed, - as I was led to understand, - by his Master- the Master Morya, to render me what assistance he could, but this was grudgingly given and helped me very little. At a later date the Master K. H. referred to my two instructors at Adyar as one of them unwilling and the other unable to give me any real help. We were not especially looking out for phenomena at this period but one little thing occurred which has a retrospective interest in showing the bona fides attach-ing to the use of what came to be called 'The Shrine " - a small cupboard hanging up on one of the walls in Madame Blavatsky's writing room. This was the subject of much intrigue and suspicion when long afterwards Dr. Hodgson was sent by the Psychic Research Society, to investigate Madame Blavatsky's phenomena in India. The cupboard had been made to contain some relics of Madame Blavatsky's time with the Masters in Tibet several years previously and it came to be used for letters addressed to the Masters which were taken from it by them by occult means.

I had been writing at Esoteric Buddhism in a lower room and as the work advanced I set down various questions to submit to the Master when oppor­tunity served. My wife one morning came in to speak to me and I gave her some such questions, asking her to give them to Madame Blavatsky for trans­mission at convenience. She it appears, took them upstairs at the opposite side of the room from 'The shrine". Madame Blavatsky told my wife to put my questions in the shrine which she did, remaining in the room talking to "the old lady" as we always called her. In about 10 minutes Madame Blavatsky told my wife that the Master had already sent some answer. My wife went to the shrine and there found a reply to my questions from the Master, or rather a few lines in his writing promising an answer next day. The incident was very simple but very complete in its phenomenal character. Madame Blavatsky had not moved from her seat at the writing table during the ten minutes referred to.

For a part of our time at Madras, we went over and stayed with Sir Charles Turner, then Chief Justice of Madras and left for Europe in the P & 0 "Peshawar" on the 31st March. Our journey home via Venice was pleasant enough. We travelled via Bale to Calais and reached London on the 26th April

We soon became intimate friends of Mrs. and Miss Arundale then living in Elgin Crescent, Notting Hill, and their house became a rendezvous for the first group of people seriously interested in Theosophy. There I first met Mrs. Kingsford who was President of the gradually developing British Theosophical Society. Mr. C. C. Massey was among the earliest and most prominent adher­ents of the movement and some meetings of the young society took place at

23

his rooms in Victoria Street. It was at this time that "Esoteric Buddhism" was a 7

published, but I do not find any record in the diary of the exact date at which it was actually launched. I made a great many very interesting acquain­tanceships during this period and interest in the Theosophical movement be­began to spread rapidly in some of the upper levels of society. Frederic Myers, Gurney, Professor Sidgwick, the leaders of the Psychic Research Society, were keenly interested and sympathetic at first.

In August of this year my wife and I had a trip abroad visiting the Massy's first of all at Boulogne where they were staying and going on to Brussels, the Hague, Amsterdam and then on to Elberfeld to stay with the

• Gebharts where we were received with great cordiality. This was the beginning of a very intimate friendship with the whole

family. At first Mrs. Gebhart was the only member of it interested in occultism. She had previously come over to London to J1}ake our acquain­tance. By degrees the other members of the family became interested also. Mr. Gebhart was a wealthy manufacturer of velvets and other fabrics. One of the sons, Arthur, was a devotee of Wagner, much amusing chaff on this subject passing between himself and his father. Rudolph, the younger son, had extraordinary gifts as an amateur conjurer. As time went on they all came to play more or less important parts in the Theosophical movement.

We went on eventually, after a protracted and very pleasant visit, with Mrs. Gebhart and Arthur to Wiesbaden, and during these wanderings I seem to have received news from India to the effect that efforts to raise capital for the proposed new paper had failed, so that we abandoned all thoughts of an:­turn to India. We ultimately returned home via Ostend, reaching London on the 2nd October. Theosophical activities were at once resumed, the Arundale's house being the general meeting place.

On the 12th of December I find a significant entry in the diary, though the meaning of it was little appreciated at the time. We were living at 34 Royal Crescent, Mrs. Edensor's house. I forget where she and her daughter Thomasine lived but at all events we had taken over the house for a time, though busily engaged in searching for one in which we could permanently settle. The entry in question is "Mr. Bottomley called". The explanation of the visit was this:- I had come to the conclusion, on the fmal abandonment of the new paper scheme in India, that the best thing I could do would be to buy an important interest in some London paper in which I could fmd some scope for editorial work the security of which would be insured by my rights as part proprietor. I put an advertisement in the "Athenaeum" indicating my purpose. Strange to say, - as offers to buy anything generally evoke many proposals of a more or less disingenuous order, - I only had one answer, -

('"This name is usually spelt Gebhard, but is consistently Gebhart in the typescript. L.P.)

24

from Mr. Horatio Bottomley! And long afterwards I learned from him that he as had never seen the "Athenaeum" till he picked up a copy off some public table , and noticed my advertisement.

He had no newspaper to sell but he was not deterred from answering the advertisement by that consideration. He had been , - none that I ever met exactly knew what, in his early life. Then he became a solicitor's clerk; then learned shorthand and did law reporting. He was engaged in this way when I made his acquaintance and he had developed an idea. Just then a fashion had arisen for what were called "local parliaments" -debating societies which im­itated the forms of the House of Commons. He thought there was room for a paper to be called "The Debater" which should be the organ of this move­ment and record the proceedings of local parliaments. The idea did not spec­ially appeal to me but the venture would be on a very modest scale,- and Mr. Bottomley was very persuasive. It came to pass, -not immediately but a short time afterwards that I was induced to fmd £100 to start the enterprise.

I cannot interrupt the regular progress of my narrative by following on here with the story of my relations with Mr. Bottomley destined in the end to involve my absolute ruin . This was the outcome of many years operations but I may say at once that Mr. Bottomley was never in any sense fraudulent in his dealings with me. Quite the contrary. The ridiculous little investment in the "Debator" turned out profitably and at one time it seemed that my relations with Bottomley had been magnificently productive of something like fortune. But the progress of my business undertakings must be dealt with as they fall into their proper place amongst the other experiences of the next few years .

Our search for houses led us at last to settle on 7 Ladbroke Gardens. Meanwhile meetings of the Society took place at various houses and I fmd a record of one held at Mr. Hood's Chambers in Stone Buildings at which it appears , Mrs. Kingsford , still the President read letters of her own to Colonel Olcott and others relating to her re-election as President. This began a good deal of friction and worry which ultimately led to her detachment from the Society. She had a very high opinion of the importance of her own "Hermetic" movement and of her own book ' 'The Perfect Way" and aimed rather at annexing The Theosophical Society to that undertaking than at working in it as the predominant organisation. This attitude on her part alien­ated the sympathies of the theosophists who had been drawn into the move­ment by the new teaching from India embodied in my own books, but it was not till a little later that Mrs Kingsford realised this.

I cannot even with the help of the diary give a very connected account of the trouble with Mrs. Kingsford. Several letters and telegrams from the Master K. H. reached me on the subject and I know I gathered later on that "The Old

25

Chohan" as we used to call him was guided by his high appreciation of Mrs. 40

Kingsford's work in the Anti-Vivisection movement, to support her in refer­ence to her proposed re-election as President.

We moved into our new house on the 31st January 1884, and it soon be­came the centre of a great deal of theosophical activity. At this time interest in the subject was spreading rapidly in the upper levels of society and news of this development induced Madame Blavatsky to abandon her intention- very defmitely expressed to us when we stayed with her at Adyar on our way home, - of remaining there for the rest of her life. She arranged to come to Europe, accompanied by Colonel Olcott, - much to my regret as I foresaw trouble in connexion with their presence in London.

It appears that on the 5th of April my wife and I went to the Victoria Station to meet Colonel Olcott and Mohini, who had come on in advance of Madame Blavatsky. Mohini was (then) a young native of India supposed to be a probationary chela of K. H. 's and he was destined to play a very important part in the development of theosophy in the West.

On the 7th of April a very sensational meeting of the Society was held for the purpose of electing the new President, at Mr. Finch's Chambers in lincoln's Inn. By this time I had become convinced that Mrs. Kingsford's re­election was not desirable and though some members wished to propose my­self it seemed to me better under the circumstances to appoint someone else. I therefore proposed Mr. Finch, a barrister, who in his time had been senior wrangler at Cambridge and who, at this period, seemed to take a very deep and sympathetic interest in theosophy. In the long run this feeling on his part weakened but he fitted in with the emergency of which I am writing. When the voting was taken Mrs. Kingsford's candidature was found to have no support whatever and Mr. Finch was elected by what was practically a un­animous vote. Indeed I think Mr. Maitland who was present was the only person who voted for Mrs. Kingsford.

But this was not the only sensation of the evening. Quite unexpectedly in the middle of proceedings Madame Blavatsky made her appearance, the whole meeting being of course thrilled with excitement. We took Madame Blavatsky home with us and floods of eager visitors soon began to throng the house, but about a week later she returned to Paris for a time, Colonel Olcott and Mohini apparently staying on at the Arundale's. Our time seems to have been almost entirely absorbed by theosophical meetings, informal gatherings of the more intimate members, and interviews with enquiring strangers. For a week or two in May and the beginning of June my wife and I, with the child, went to Hastings for the sake of my wife's health as she was delicate at this time. I and others were amused, I remember, by a recommendation from

26

K. H. that she should take whisky and milk. Madame Blavatsky had always 41

been fanatical in her detestation of alcohol in any of its forms, and had im­posed her will in this matter on Colonel Olcott who was greatly surprised at the recommendation above referred to. Apropos to this little incident I may say here that I have never regarded dietic rules and regulations as of any im­portance in connexion with real spiritual growth. That depends on the de­velopment of character and behaviour in presence of the various crises and trials of life, and the two great psychics I have known in my later experiences were neither of them vegetarians or total abstainers from wine. It is needless to say that they were both very moderate in their use of meat and wine, but fanaticism in such matters is based on a delusion.

About this time Mrs. Holloway, a wonderfully gifted American psychic came to stay with us and ultimately went on to stay with the Arundale's. She used to get vivid clairvoyant visions of the Masters, - could pass on messages to me from K. H. and on one occasion he actually made use of her to speak to me in the first person. She fell away from theosophy at a much later date after her return to America and married again, -she was a young widow when with us, - but though she meant well she somehow contrived to engender a (temporary) strain of feeling between Miss Arundale and ourselves.

Meanwhile a desperate crisis in the Society came on under conditions I well remember. Madame Blavatsky had returned to London and was staying with the Arundale's . On the 30th of June 1884 (I get the date from the diary, though for the rest I remember the occasion but too well) we all went to a meeting of the Psychic Research Society. In the course of the proceedings Colonel Olcott without any invitation, got up and made a speech of an extra­ordinarily tactless character. The leaders of the Psychic Research Society were intensely careful to keep all its proceedings on the level of upper class culture. Now Colonel Olcott, with all the goodness and devotion to the cause, was not in tune with the taste of cultivated Europeans. The diary record stands "Colonel 01. made a dreadful goose of himself and made 0. L. furious and ashamed. (0. L. of course stands for "Old Lady", the name by which we always spoke of and to Madame Blavatsky.)

Though staying at the time with the Arundales the O.L. insisted on com­ing back to our house after the meeting to blow off her passion. Her face was white from the intensity of her emotion; she spoke so loudly that I was afraid she would disturb the neighbours and she reviled the unfortunate Colonel until he was driven to ask her if she wanted him to commit suicide. Of course the display of passion was useless and absurd in one way, but she realised, without foreseeing details, that something awful had happened. And indeed it had. The later troubles, which shattered the Society in Europe for a

27

time, all dated back to the ghastly evening I have described. The Psychic lead- 43

ers had all their teeth set on edge by the Colonel's unhappy outbreak. They had up to that time been eager to be in close touch with the Theosophical movement. Frederic Myers and Gurney were drifting into the circle cif our intimate friends . But the Theosophical Society was too young to stand the shock of the consequences that ensued from the Colonel's indiscretion . Anticipating records that I may have to deal with more in detail later on, I may say here that the dispatch of Richard Hodgson to India to investigate Madame Blavatsky's phenomena, his unfavourable report , and the collapse of our young Society from which almost everyone fell away , when it seemed as if Madame Blavatsky had been found out and disgraced , - were all the fruits of that miserable evening, the 30th June 1884.

The catastrophe , in my opinion, justified the regret I had freely expressed when Madame Blavatsky announced her change of plans and her intention of coming to Europe, to play a part in the unexpected enthusiasm which "Esoteric Buddhism" had excited .

A very disagreeable period now supervened though the consequences of the Colonel's faux pas did not culminate till much later. But the 0. L. was very quarrelsome and the diary contains several allusions to letters and protests from me that passed between us, though I cannot, at this distance of time remember defmitely what the trouble was about. I fmd a record in the diary dated the middle of July referring to some reply from the 0. L. to a letter of mine "Which did not soothe the situation but rendered it much worse. In the envelope containing hers were a few lines purporting to be from K. H. saying that she was right and we wrong. Went to bed feeling that our theosphical career was approaching its end."

Probably the few lines in question were fabricated by the 0. L. herself, as she was reckless in using the Master's names in vain when it suited the purpose of the moment.

Miss Arundale and Mrs. Holloway appear to have come in to see us next morning and Mrs. Holloway is described as declaring that she meant "to give up the whole business in disgust."

It may seem strange to future readers that I should have forgotten what the row was all about, but throughout my later relations with Madame Blavatsky - after our return from India, - rows were so frequent that a much better memory than mine might be pardoned for not keeping count of them all.

For one thing a scheme had been started for a conversazioni at the Prince's Hall in honour of Madame Blavatsky. She was intensely desirous of bringing this off and resolute to have me take part in it. I was reluctant, and it

28

was to compel my submission that she seems to have used the K. H. handwrit- 45

ing and signature. I had, even then, the gravest doubts as to the genuine character of these blue pencil notes, but I was somehow drawn into the conversazioni and I am not surprise to find in the diary a remark to the effect that I did not speak up to my usual level.

Madame Blavatsky's animosity to me at this time was not placated by my attendances at the conversazioni. She and others round her had been invited by the Gebhart family,- over which she had by now obtained great influence, to visit them in August. It was conveyed to us by Mrs. Gebhart very reluct­antly that we were not expected to join the party. When the time came my wife and I went on a Swiss tour on our own account. After a meeting with Mrs. Gebhart who came over to see us at Cologne and was very apologetic we went on to Thun, Interlaken - a familiar route, - and ultimately halted for some time at Murren during which my wife , with some assistance (a "chaise a porteurs" for part of the way) - succeeded in getting with me to the top of the Schildhorn.

It was during this trip that I began to write my novel "Karma". We got back to Thun on the 25th of August and stayed there at the Thunerhof for some weeks. Some special interest attached to this time as we found Miss Ethel Durand staying at our hotel with her relatives, Mrs. and Miss Galloway and having some reason to believe that she, - Miss Durand,- had psychic fac­ulties I tried some thought transfer experiments with her, and was extra­ordinarily successful. She reproduced diagrams which I drew on scraps of paper, - for the experiments were tried at first during a walk we had all taken in the woods near the Thunerhof, - we carried on the work at the hotel after­wards with invariable success. This was the beginning of a long series of mesmeric sittings I had with her, in London up to the time and to some extent after the time of her marriage with Mr. Jameson. Through her I came into touch with an Adept of whom I have since come to know a good deal, the head of the old Atlantean lodge of Occultists, -generally spoken of as the Yucatan lodge by reason of its headquarters being at Yucatan, or as I have lat­terly learned, on etheric levels above Yucatan. Mr. Jameson ultimately died in Africa while taking part in one of Stanley's journeys in the Congo country and his wife was left, a very wealthy widow, in which capacity she became the prey of an Italian Count whom she married. But all that concerned her life at that period would be too long a story to be interpolated here.

We saw a great deal of the two girls during the rest of our stay at Thun and went on thence in their company to Berne. While we were there, towards the end of September, we received a telegram from Mrs. Holloway still stay­ing with the Gebhart's calling upon us to join the Elberfeld party at once. We

29

were by no means inclined to obey this call considering the extraordinary 46

way in which we had been treated and telegraphed back that we could not come without first receiving full explanation from Mrs. Gebhart. Then came a telegram from Mrs. Gebhart declaring that the Mahatma particularly wished us to come. Again we telegraphed that we would not come without further explanations, but further telegrams at last persuaded us to consent.

We were received with glowing cordiality by the whole Gebhart family, Mrs. Gebhart coming to meet us at Cologne and I received some notes from K. H. through Mrs. Holloway of which Madame Blavatsky apparently knew nothing. To this day I do not understand the true inwardness of the whole transaction, but something had gone wrong with Madame Blavatsky who was in a queer and unusual state of mind. We arrived on the 1st of October and it was soon decided that Madame Blavatsky and Mrs. Holloway should return to London. They started on the 5th, Mrs. Gebhart delighted to see them go. In some way they had considerably outstayed their welcome . Of course the original warning not to come which had been directed against us, had been the work of the "0. L." but I never fully understood what motive guided her. We had been wrangling about something in London before the Elberfeld visit and no doubt Madame Blavatsky made free use of the Master's name in oblig­ing the Gebhart's to do violence to their cordial friendship with ourselves. But it is all ancient history now and was of merely transient importance at the time. We stayed at Elberfeld till the 9th and then returned to London.

For the next few weeks I find references in the diary to "the Inner Group" of the London Lodge but though at the time we seem to have at­tached importance to squabbles with the 0. L. about its rules and working it would hardly be worth while to go now into the details of these small troubles even if memory enabled me to do so, -which is not the case. But already there seem to have been rumours afloat concerning "The Coulomb scandal" at Adyar destined at a later date to assume such gigantic proportions. Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott left London in the beginning of November.

Theosophical activities went on, and during the month we held a con­versazione meeting at Queen's Anne's Mansions which was numerously at­tended, the impending troubles connected with the Coulomb scandal not yet having taken defmite shape. The movement still had the momentum of its early beginnings. I took part in various Psychic Research meetings, but the leaders of that Society were gradually forming the plan which ultimately cul­minated in the despatch of Mr. R. Hodgson to India to investigate the Coulomb charges and the records of phenomena worked by Madame Blavatsky.

30

All this time we used to be "at home" on Tuesday afternoons and our 48

drawing room on these occasions was always crowded with Theosophical friends and visitors whom they brought. At the annual meeting of the Society in January 1885 I was elected President, Mr. Finch's tenure of that office having been recognised as merely designed to tide over the difficulties with Mrs. Kingsford. She and I had skirmishes, but we made friends again in the course of time.

For some time past we had been seeing a good deal of Mr. l..eadbeater who originally called on me , though then a stranger, - on the strength of hav­ing read "Esoteric Buddhism". He often came to dine and stay the night with us and he had entirely from the first made up his mind to devote himself to theosophy. When he first made my acquaintance he was a Church of England curate, but he decided to throw up this appointment and go out to India. Indeed I believe he accompanied Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott when they went out in the beginning of November. Mohini remained in London after they went , the guest of the Arundale 's .

I come now to the time when the Coulomb scandal culminated. Mr. Hodgson had be(fn to India and came back very unfavourably impressed . He had brought back certain letters apparently from Madame Blavatsky to Madame Coulomb that were intensely compromising. Madame Blavatsky afterwards maintained that parts of them were forgeries, but they were shown to me in March by Mr. Myers and I could not fail to recognise the handwrit­ing and the style as those of the 0. L. Mr. Hodgson's report which the S. P. R. shortly afterwards published dealt with many other matters , besides the letters, and his attempt to show that the "Shrine" was a trick cabinet used by Madame Blavatsky for fraudulent purposes broke down for us altogether in face of the experiences we had had during our stay at Adyar in connexion with that famous little cupboard. But it is not worth while for me, here, to go into details concerning the raging controversy that arose in connexion with the Hodgson Report. It had the effect of completely shattering the Society, which melted away until it was only represented by a few faithful adherents, -the Arundales , Varleys, Keightleys and some others. But in saying this I am anticipating events that did not culminate till a good deal later.

The London season of 1885 found us still in a whirl of social activities, while I was getting more and more deeply concerned with business in associa­tion with Mr. Bottomley. I entered into this by very slow degrees, but all the earlier enterprises in which I had a part were highly prosperous. The complete tale of my brief triumphs and ruin will be more conveniently told a little later on. In August my wife and I paid a visit to Lord and Lady Northwick at Ravenstone, their place in Scotland but did not enjoy ourselves there and

31

were glad when it was over. Lady Borthwick was not altogether an easy 49

person to get on with, though her daughter Gabrielle has remained an intim-ate friend up to the time at which I am writing (1912). Directly after our re-turn from Ravenstone we went abroad (Denny, our son being provided for with his grandmother at Ilfracombe) via Brussels en route for the Gebhart's, at Elberfeld, where we had a pleasant time but no special experiences. In September we went for a trip up the Rhine, then to Heidelberg where in one of the old visitors books of the Castle of many years previously I thought I identified certain initials as those of K. H. Of course they were not the letters "K H." They were M. E. K. B. and we found these in the visitors book of 1867. I had always been led to believe that the Master had stayed for a time at Heidelberg about this period.

From Heidelberg we went on to Nuremberg and then to Wurtemburg to see the 0. L. who had left India and had established herself for the time at that place (at 6, Ludwig Strasse). I can hardly explain her departure from India but it had to do with some anxieties connected with the publication of the Hodgson Report. She was supposed to be in some danger from possible legal proceedings and came over to Europe to bury herself, as it were , for a time, in a quiet retreat. By this time the Society in Europe had crumpled up, and very few persons besides ourselves remained her friends . Some of her Russian relatives and acquaintances were also at Wurtemburg, among them M. Solovioff who pretended to be her friend , but shortly afterwards wrote a book about her denouncing her as an impostor.

We stayed at Wurtemburg from the 21st of September till the 1st of October when we went again to Elberfeld for a few days and so home. During the next month or two there was some revival of interest in the Society and we even had a meeting at Queen Anne's Mansions when I gave a lecture on "The Higher Self' - afterwards embodied in the London Lodge transaction with that title .

Towards the end of 1885 and for some time afterwards we were very much worried by a certain Madame Leonard who had joined the Society and had carried on a passionate flirtation with Mohini. It is not worth while to go into the details, but she went over to Paris and declared to a lady connected with the Society there, - Madame de Morsier, that she had been seduced by Mohini. Madame de Morsier wrote to me denouncing Mohini whom I believed to be quite innocent. To this day I do not feel sure that I knew the actual rights of the whole business, but I wrote back to Madame de Morsier express­ing disbelief in the story told her by Madame Leonard. She very indiscreetly showed this letter to Madame Leonard who turned her wrath on ourselves and began legal proceedings against my wife and myself for libel. The whole

32

affair fizzled out eventually but it gave us a great annoyance at the time and 51

put me to some expense. On the 26th of April1886 I find an entry in the diary the importance of

which we had no means of realising at the time. We went on that afternoon to the Albemarle Club to have tea with "the Stackpole girls" and to meet a lady who was, I was told, desirous of making my acquaintance. I will not here give her real name, - although this narrative will certainly not be published in her lifetime, because she played for a long while a very important part in my oc­cult life and by marriage eventually became connected with a family, repres­entatives of which may still be living when these lines are given to the world. As she became very intimate with us soon after we met her I will give her a fictitious name and call her Mary.

Nothing occurred on the occasion of our first meeting which fore­shadowed the future developments , but shortly afterwards she and one of the friends with whom she was staying came more than once to the Tuesday re­ceptions at our house , and on one of these occasions, I tried a mesmeric experiment with her (in accordance with her wish) and obtained remarkable results - she went very easily into a trance in which she became unequivocally clairvoyant. This was on the 1st of June and next day, at the house of friends with whom she was staying, I tried again with still more striking success for I became convinced that she clairvoyantly saw the mountain region in Tibet where the Master K. H. resided. Whenever opportunity served for the next few weeks our mesmeric sittings were repeated and it became obvious that Mary might become a link between myself and the Master. But these proceed­ings were interrupted by her return home,- far away from London.

We spent the autumn holidays this year at Ventnor where the Massys had established themseleves and where the Stackpole's also came. But before joining my wife at Ventnor I seemed to have paid a visit to Madame Blavatsky at Ostende whither she had migrated from Wurtemburg. I say "seem" to have done this as my memory is untrustworthy unless where assisted by the diary. There I fmd a reference to my departure for Ostende and for the rest, I well remember being for a time with the 0. L. at Ostende where she was busy writing the Secret Doctrine.

By this time I had written the book entitled "Incidents in the life of Madame Blavatsky". It was an attempt to re-establish her reputation in reply to the attacks of Mr. Hodgson's Report published by the Psychic Research Society. She was passionately desirous that I should do something to defend her, and it seemed to me that the best I could do was to write as complete an account of her life as it was possible to put together . She entirely agreed and did what she could to help me in the work which was one of great difficulty

33

as the inaccuracy , - to use a mild expression, - of all she had told us of her 62

life from time to time made it extremely difficult to put together, in coherent and consistent narrative. But somehow the task was accomplished and she was well pleased with the result until she found that some of her Russian relatives were angry with her for having been so loyal to the British rule in India. She had often warned her Hindoo friends not to be so silly as to wish to change that for Russian rule which they would find more onerous. When she found in this way that the "Incidents" had offended her Russian relatives she grew angry with the book, and used frequently to refer to it, - with her usual freedom of speech, as "those damned Memoirs". So on the whole I did not get much reward for the trouble I had taken in the shape of thanks. Nor in any other way, for it is just worth while to record the fact that none of my theosophical books have yielded me any appreciable profit of a pecuniary order. Though they have had a widespread influence on the world , their circu­lation has never been on a scale giving rise to substantial profits.

We spent the Christmas of 1886 at Ventnor and the early months of 1887 seem to have been very fully occupied with social engagements and Theosophical meetings. In March an important conference took place at Dr. Archibald Keightley's house, in Notting Hill. He, Bertram Keightley, Mr. Hamilton , Dr. Aston Ellis and Mrs. Keningale Cook (Mabel Collins) were desirous of bringing over Madame Blavatsky to London. I was opposed to the idea from a vague feeling that her coming would give rise to trouble, but the idea was carried out. Meanwhile on the 19th of March, Mary came to stay on a visit with us and serious mesmeric sittings began with definite communica­tions from the Master. But all this was kept profoundly secret from our theo­sophical friends generally , -in accordance with the Master's wish. Mary left us for a time in April to stay with her old friends the MacCallums but was con­stantly with us for afternoons or evenings and the mesmeric sittings contin­ued . All this time they had rather to do with her own development than with matters specially interesting to myself. This development was carried on on the manasic plane and I was warned against putting any questions to her which would have entangled her with astral conditions.

In May , Mary came back to stay with us again and after a week or two went elsewhere but returned to us again in June , leaving us as we thought at the time finally for that year on the 23rd.

Madame Blavatsky was, at this time staying at Norwood at a house lent to her by Mrs. K. Cook. I used frequently to visit her there. Her devoted friends, the Keightleys, Mr. Harbottle and others formed with her co-opera­tion the Blavatsky Lodge of the Theosophical Society. I was rather detached in sympathy from all this enthusiasm by which she was surrounded and

34

absorbed with my own work with Mary all knowledge of which was carefully 64

kept back from the 0. L. and her group. In July Mary contrived to get back to us for a little while longer but left

us on her return home in about a week. Perhaps this may be a convenient time for me to say something about the

progress of my business relations with Mr. Bottornley and the various com­panies he was concerned with forming. The diary does not help me much in this matter but my memory is clear enough about the general progress of events , though I cannot give dates with precision, as in connection with mat­ters which the diary deals with. Anyhow up to the period I have been so far concerned with, my affairs had been magnificently prosperous. I had em­barked money in the Bottornley companies with a very cautious hand but they had all been brilliantly successful. The little enterprise already referred to , the publication of the "Debator" was followed up by an arrangement Mr. Bottornley entered into with certain printers then established in Catherine Street, Strand and with them formed the Catherine Street Publishing Association,- a company of which I became a Director, bringing in also Mr. Kegan Paul , whose acquaintance I had made. This company prospered and I became an important shareholder partly by actual investment, partly by concessions of various kinds made to me by Bottornley, and I also invested money in undertakings with which he had nothing to do , - one a pottery company which ultimatefy came to grief and in a Welsh Gold Mining Company which proved equally disappointing. But for a time the Bottornley enterprises went on splendidly. By his advice, we , the Directors of the Catherine Street Publishing Association , tendered for the printing of Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, and secured the government contract. This jusified the re-<:onstruction of our Company on a greatly enlarged scale and the Hansard Union was formed, with an enormous capital that was sub­scribed by the public three times over. It was a vast amalgamation of several great printing firms and for a long while was exceedingly prosperous. But this stimulated rivalry. A scheme was started in the City for the construction of a new printing union on similar lines to ours. Bottornley insisted on our amal­gamation with it, and this was carried out, but the whole huge business was beyond proper control. It is difficult to understand how it got into trouble, but a great volume of Debentures were held by a certain Company called The Debenture Corporation and this arrangement wrecked the Union. Its property was seized by the Debenture holders and the shares of which I held a large number became valueless .

It is needless to go into minute details nor indeed would it be possible for me to do so at this distance of time (I am writing in the year 1912) but the

35

crash came in 1890 and I was utterly ruined. 66

Bottomley also was ruined himself and was the object of fierce criminal prosecutions from which after prolonged trials he emerged unscathed. He was helped a few years later to set up a new fmancial business, friends fmding the capital, - and he was able to take advantage of a sudden furore in favour of Australian gold mining. He formed many companies which were successful and with the vast profits of their promotion he again became,- on paper,- a millionaire. He behaved very generously to me, and made over to me shares which at the time were really marketable to the amount of about £8,000.

The intervening period had been very terrible for us, its most intense anxieties arising from an action brought against a group of Hansard Directors for a huge sum of money more than we collectively possessed. In the Court where this action was first tried it went against us, and we were confronted with the ghastly prospect of formal bankruptcy. I remember that a day or two after the unfavourable verdict I received a letter from Mary from which as I opened it there fell out a minute scrap of diaphanous paper on which, when I picked it up , I found the words "courage and hope" inscribed in the well known K. H. handwriting, and before long this encouraging hint was vindicated by the reversal of the verdict against us in the lower court by the Court of Appeal. So the actual terrors of bankruptcy were dissipated.

But the strain for several years was very serious 1 and I had to work very hard at writing for the Indian papers in order to make both ends meet. When ultimately Bottomley gave me the Australian mining shares we seemed to be restored to comfort , but the situation proved delusive. I realised some of the paper , all of which might have been realised if the danger to which it was sub­ject had been suspected, but it was all regarded as likely to improve in value . The forces then controlling my affairs were uniformly effective in guiding me to do the wrong thing. On one occasion I sold certain shares I held for £1 ,200. A friend in whose honourable character I had profound trust and who was engaged in perfecting an invention from which great results were anticipated knew of this transaction and asked me to lend him £500. He be­lieved himself sure to be in a position to repay the loan in a few months . He was disappointed in that expectation and ultimately drifting into ruin himself was never able to pay me back anything. Another £500 went in fulfilment of what I regarded as a moral obligation to another man. It is not worth while to set down the details, but the money was lost . No legal obligation bound me to carry out this transaction, but it seemed the right thing to do.

And in due time the West Australian "boom" was followed by a West Australian "slump" and the share certificates in my hands turned to withered leaves.

36

Among the blows I suffered from during the long period of fmancial dis- 57

tress was one that had no connexion with speculative business. At the time I left India a vague scheme was entertained by the proprietors of the "Pioneer" for the establishment of a London office for that paper and the "Civil and Military Gazette". It was suggested that I might, if the idea should be carried out , become the manager of such an office. Ultimately it was decided to set it on foot, and the task of making all arrangements was confided to me . I was to have a salary of £500 a year which was a godsend at the time for our Hansard troubles had already set in . I did everything in connection with the establishment of the office , - found suitable rooms, engaged the staff, put the work of the office in train , and all went well for a year or two. But by that time the superintendence of the office had become so smooth and agreeable that Sir George Alien , - who had bought back a sufficient interest in the "Pioneer" to become its managing proprietor and who was now settled in London determined that he would take over the management of the London office himself. So he turned me out of the appointment to assume its func­tions himself. It was a cruel blow at the time for me, as the salary had become so important to me and it was a curious condition of things as I was dismissed not for having in any way failed to perform the tasks assigned to me , but for an exactly opposite reason. I had rendered the position I occupied too com­fortable ; I had done my work too well. But the law governing my life at the time was wonderfully uniform in its operation.

It was a long and very miserable struggle that I had to go through and though we contrived to hold on in Leinster Gardens, - whither we moved just before the crash, - for fifteen years, we were never, except for the brief inter­lude I have referred to, free from wearing anxiety in connection with money matters.

I will now revert to the main thread of my story without interrupting it continually to record the progress of my business undertakings.

I have learned since this was written that the whole series of misfortune that culminated in our utter ruin, was not (as we supposed at the time) Karrnic in its character. It was a stupendous "Black attack", - the outcome of an elaborate Satanic plot , the idea being to disgust my wife and myself with our own Masters for not having saved us from ruin, so that we might in anger, abandon all further Theosophical work. As we bore our sufferings without doing this, the ruin turned into an ordeal (of awful severity) through which we passed successfully, with commensurate results of an important character on the spiritual plane.

In October 1887 Madame Blavatsky moved from Norwood to_ 17 lansdowne Road, Notting Hill, the house having been taken for her I believe

37

by Archibald and Bertram Keightley. It soon became thronged with visitors 69

and my wife and I frequently went there in the evenings. But a certain strain of feeling gradually developed as between Madame Blavatsky and ourselves. We could not quite fall in with the adoring attitude of the little group immed­iately around her.

Mary came to stay with us again in February 1888 and our regular mes­meric sittings were resumed almost every evening, the Master talking to me through her in most cases. In this way I gathered a great deal of miscellaneous occult information. Mary had a great desire to see Madame Blavatsky and this was at first discouraged by the Master who did not wish her {Madame Blavatsky) to be acquainted in any way with our private developments. If she did know about them they would become liable to contamination. However permission was at last given for a specific evening when he would take the necessary precautions, and we all went, but the 0. L. took no notice of Mary and was quite unsuspicious of her characteristics.

In March we received a magnificent present of books from Mrs. At wood -the authoress of "A suggestive enquiry into the Hermetic Mystery". I had never met her up to this time, but she had written to me on the strength of having read my books, and said that she possessed a considerable library of books relating to occult subjects collected by her father, Dr. South, and late husband and herself, and did not wish them dispersed at her death. She was already far advanced in life and her days of study were over. She preferred to think that the books would be in my keeping rather than allow them to be ultimately scatterd by sale. Of course I gratefully accepted the offer and the books came together with a very beautiful bookcase that held the most im­portant of them. I may anticipate later events by saying at once that when, in 1908 my household was broken up by the passing on from this life of my dear wife I was much puzzled how to dispose of them and ultimately made a present of the whole collection to Mr. Scott Elliot feeling that in his hands, at his family place , Arkleton in Scotland, they would at all events be kept permanently together.

All this time I was continually lecturing at one place or another. For the sake of encouraging the publication of Theosophical literature, I had put some money into the publishing business of G. W. Red way then carried on in York Street, Covent Garden. This made me his partner, but in his dealings with me I always found him straightforward and honest. I engaged a room in the house where his business was carried on for the L. L. of the Theosophical Society and we had occasional meetings and lectures there and collected a few books, Redway became the publisher of Madame Blavatsky's magazine "Lucifer" and this led to a curious incident tending for a time to widen the

38

breach between Madame Blavatsky and myself. She became impressed with 61

the idea, - quite erroneously, - that Red way had not dealt fairly with her and supported by the Keightley's and others then around her actually brought an action against him for a claim of about £30, disregarding the fact that as I was his partner the action was directed as much against myself as against him. When the case came to be tried in some County Court, for it was pushed to that extremity, the decision was entirely in Redway's favour and the Lansdowne Road group were very angry with me for having supported him. Further trouble ensued - fomented I imagine by Madame Jellikofsky, · (Madame Blavatsky's sister) who was in London on a visit about this time,· in connection with some abusive and threatening letters addressed to me by a man name Pfounds whom I never saw but who constituted himself Madame Blavatsky's champion on some theory that I had been treating her with dis­respect. I had some correspondence with her on the subject of her attitude to me being highly unfriendly and our intercourse for a time was completely suspended.

Mary left us to go to her own home in May 1888 having had mesmeric sittings almost every evening while she was with us, at most of which the Master spoke to me, - or rather dictated to her what he wished to say. She would pass into a higher condition in which she could be in touch with him and be enabled to repeat his words to her in reply to my questions or remarks.

In the autumn my wife and I had a very pleasant tour to Switzerland -including a visit to Pontresina in the Engadine, - and wound it up with a visit to the Gebhart's at Elberfeld. We returned home about the end of September.

In October Mary wrote indicating, under guidance that it would be wise of us to make friends again with the 0. L. and we did this, asking her to dine. She duly came, but the situation was again a little strained in November when the "Secret Doctrine" was published.

The beginning of that book contained and still contains in its later editions a sort of attack on "Esoteric Buddhism" in which it is alleged that I misundersood the Master's teaching in reference to Mars and Mercury. Madame Blavatsky deemed that these planets were not part of our chain and pretends that she referred the matter to the Master and received from him a letter parts of which she published in "The Secret Doctrine" apparently conflnning her view. I may as well complete the record of this incident though it straggled on for a considerable time. I know that there had been no ambiguity in the Master's original teaching concerning Mars and Mercury and I was puzzled by a vague feeling that I was familiar with bits of the letter pub­lished in the "Secret Doctrine". This led me some time afterwards to hunt through the early letters all of which I had of course carefully preserved, and

39

I found the letter in question, also fmding to my surprise- that the 0. L. had 62

ventured to garble and omit parts of it so as to make it appear to sustain her view when in reality it did nothing of the kind. I refrained however from making a disturbance in the matter, - assured by the Master that I need not worry myself about it and that of course the explanation concerning Mars and Mercury in "Esoteric Buddhism" was perfectly correct.

During the time that we were seeing very little of Madame Blavatsky she had made the acquaintance of Mrs. Besant who she captivated entirely. Mrs. Besant had some rights over a house in the Avenue Road, St. John's Wood, and thither Madame Blavatsky and her household migrated eventually.

Meanwhile I was pestered with letters from all over the world asking me how it came about that I made my extraordinary mistake about Mars and Mercury and at last it seemed to me desirable that I should make a public statement of the real facts about the garbled letter.

Perhaps I ought here to explain how a copy of that letter came into Madame Blavatsky's hands. When we first returned from India the little group of earnest people who gathered round us were intensely interested in hearing all I could tell them about my correspondence with the Master. I used to read them some of the original letters and they begged to be allowed to have copies of them. I referred the matter to the Master and he distinctly disap-proved. The letters, he pointed out, were for my instruction and could not properly be understood unless they were read side by side with my letters to him of which I had no copies. But the craving continued and about a year later I again asked permission to allow some of the letters to be copied. This was almost reluctantly given on condition that any persons to whom I gave copies should give me a solenm pledge that they would not pass them to any­body else. Miss Arundale was one of those who had copies and when long afterwards Madame Blavatsky had come to England and had gone to stay with the Arundale's, she it appears, hearing of these copies, ordered Miss Arundale to give them to her . Miss Arundale by this time was passionately de­voted to her and held her will to override all the sanctity of the original pledge. The copies were given to Madame Blavatsky and many of them to my deep regret, have found their way into print in America and elsewhere.

Returning to the course of events, I decided at last that I would take the original letter which Madame Blavatsky had so strangely misused in the "Secret Doctrine", to a meeting of Theosophists at the Avenue Road and expose the whole affair. I actually went to the meeting with the letter in my · pocket, - and I did not carry out the exposure. I suppose I was influenced to refrain. I returned home and restored the letter to the box containing the rest.

40

Then again at a later date, at a time when Mary was with us, the annoy- 64

ance about the conflict of statement between my book and Madame Blavatsky's became accentuated and once more I detennined that the truth must be declared. Again I sought for the all important letter in the box, but I could not ftnd it. My wife and Mary helped me too and went over the contents of the box, paper by paper until they were in a position to be certain that the letter I wanted was not there. I frankly asked the Master whether it had been purloined by occult means and he said he would rather not answer that question . I have since had reason to feel sure that Madame Blavatsky did actually purloin the letter by the exercise of occult agency and the incident does credit to her powers as a magician though not to her moral principles.

Long afterwards when Mrs. Besant and Leadbeater had, in connection with the development of their own psychic faculties been enabled to verify the parts played by Mars and Mercury in the evolution of our human family, Mrs. Besant, then in control of "Lucifer" published a statement vindicating the a-ctual facts but it is a pity that current editions of the "Secret Doctrine", are still blemished by the scandalous passage on the subject.

Mary came back to us in February 1889 and our mesmeric sittings were resumed. Neither the diary nor my recollection enable me to give any detaile/1 account of the conversations with the Master, or with "She" as we got into tJ;le habit of calling Mary's higher self. (the term suggested by Rider Hagg"rd',s novel) but they all contributed to the preparation of the various "Trans­actions" of the London Lodge, which played such an important part in the expansion of our theosophical knowledge. Mary obeyed, very reluctantly, a call to return home and left us in the middle of May. Immediately afterwards we went down to Southsea, my wife needing a change of air, after a very worrying illness, an attack of shingles, which kept her in bed for nearly a fort­night. Returning after a week or two we resumed our rather active social life, our Tuesday afternoon receptions being thronged as usual.

In the autumn holiday season we . again went to Southsea and stayed some weeks. In conjunction with Colonel Gordon I hired a yacht and we constantly went out sailing either by ourselves or with friends. Then on our return to town we went over to Paris to see the great French Exhibition and the Eiffel Tower then just erected. During our stay at Southsea we went over one day to Bembridge and were greatly attracted by a house there, for sale, West Cliffe by name. I was at this time in possession of abundant means as the Hansard Union was at the climax of its prosperity, and we were seriously thinking of buying West Cliffe, but for reasons I never fathomed a letter from Mary, whose inspiration we entirely trusted, strongly discountenanced the

41

idea, so we gave it up. This always seemed to me a pity, as when the financial 66

crash came the house, ·· worth £1,800 ·would have been so much saved from the wreck.

Quite recently , (I add this note in the year 1914) I have learned from the Master that his reason for discouraging the purchase of the house in question, was due to the fact that a Black attack against me aimed at getting me drowned, if I had settled in the Isle of Wight, when, · in consequence of my love of the sea, I should certainly have set myself up with a sailing boat. I have it seems been the subject of many such attacks most of which have been warded off (always when they actually threatened Ufe) by the Po~ers of the White Lodge.

Arrangements had now been made for bringing home Mr. Leadbeater from Ceylon where he was very miserable, to be tutor to our son Denny, now a boy of 12. The eagerness with which he accepted the proposal was touching but one difficulty stood in the way. He had been directed by the Master to take charge of a Ceylon boy, - karmically related to him, and could not come to England, without bringing this boy with him. We shrank from the idea at first but concluded to submit to the arrangement for the Master's sake, as the education of the boy by Leadbeater was apparently his design. They arrived about Christmas 1889. The Ceylon boy, about Denny's age, was called Kurufrumullega Jinarajahdasa soon shortened for convenience into Raja.

I was much impressed by a little incident that occurred shortly after­wards, in January 1890, when Mary dropped in upon us quite unexpectedly having come to London in company with other friends. I had been careful never to say a word to Leadbeater about the developments with her. He hap· pened to be in the drawing-room with my wife when Mary, having spoken in passing to me in the library , rushed upstairs and burst in upon them. In a few minutes Leadbeater came down to me in a highly excited state. "Do you know?" he asked. I guessed what he meant and said "yes". He had seen the blaze of Mary's unusual aura and had instantly recognised her as one far advanced in occultism. Mary came to stay with us on the 8th of February and our mesmeric sittings resumed. I find frequent references in the diary to lectures I delivered at various friends' houses and elsewhere .

During this period the Master gave me through Mary, a good deal of in­formation about my Egyptian lives, preceding the Roman incarnation, and I may as well take this opportunity for giving some account of the earlier of the two which took place about 1900 years before the second, that being as­signed to the 19th Dynasty. In the earlier life I was a soldier and was seen in company with Leadbeater also a soldier, going up the river with an expedition sent to suppress some rebellion. At the city to which we were sent a good

42

deal of fighting took place and we brought away amongst the prisoners a 67

young man, ultimately destined to become the Master. I believe I somehow prevented his being killed. On our return to Thebes he was given, as a slave or prisoner of war to a lady {identified with Mary) who was very kind to him and provided for him some appointment in the Temple. A girl brought down among the prisoners, - {identified with my wife of this life) was given to me as an extra wife, polygamy being a matter of course at that period. My second Egyptian life was described at the beginning of this autobiography.

Mary stayed with us on this visit, till the end of May. Towards the end of June my wife and I went over for a week to Paris, the trip being connected with one of the Bottornley Companies that I was concerned with which had taken over "Galiguani's Messenger". It proved a ghastly failure in the end when the general crash came on. In July we went- for a time to Bembridge; stayed at the Spithead Hotel and looked over more houses in the Isle of White and were greatly fascinated by one in particular, called "Willow Bank", but never quite made up our minds to buy it. I returned to London. My Wife joined Mr. l.eadbeater, the boys and Miss Arundale at a farmhouse on Soutlr., ampton water, but came back to me in London in the course of August, and then we went again to Switzerland, first to Lucerne, then to Ouchy , Lausanne, and eventually to Chamonix. There we made some stay and my wife was sufficiently invigorated by the Swiss air to take long walks up the neighbouring heights, sometimes using a mule part of the way. I by myself did my longest Alpine excursion going up to Grands Mulets.

This was about the climax of my delusive prosperity. In December we settled to take another house and on the 31st of that month moved into 27, l.einster Gardens. In the course of January 1891 the serious trouble began with the progress of this I have already dealt.

Mary came to London in the course of January and came on to stay with us in February and the usual mesmeric sittings were resumed. Also in spite of the interior gloom that pervaded us the usual social routine seems to have been continued and crowds of visitors always came to our Tuesday receptions.

We were not in close touch with the household at the Avenue Road and I find a record in the diary for the 9th of May, that we heard then of the death of Madame Blavatsky which had taken place the previous day. On the 11th I attended the cremation at Woking, Mary left us, this time, to return home on the 2nd of May. We ourselves did not indulge in any expensive touring this year but made the best of visits to Southsea, and the same story applies to the following year, 1892 in the beginning of which we were troubled a good deal with illness. My wife got some ailment which affected her feet and hands so that she could not stand and was laid up for a long while in bed, and during ·

43

this period our son , Denny got a bad attack of measles which narrowly 69

escaped a fatal termination , fully expected by the Doctor. I had been sitting up with him till 2 a .m. one night and was then relieved by Mary who was with us at the time . She afterwards told us that about 3.30 the Master came and did something which put an end to the danger. My boy after this made a rapid recovery, and when my wife was well enough we all went down to Southsea for a change . Mary accompanied us . I was much interested on this occasion by an accidental manifestation of her clairvoyant faculties. Shortly before , in London, I had taken her to a naval exhibition at Earls Court , one feature of which was a full sized model of Nelson's ship the "Victory" with wax groups showing the fall of Nelson when shot and his death below. This did not affect her any more than a picture might have done , but when at Southsea I took her on board the real "Victory' -clean and polished as a new pin , she could hardly pick her way across the deck. The whole scene of the battle was in full activity before her astral vision and the deck was swimming in blood.

It must have been soon after our return from this trip that we formed a group of the most earnest students of the London Lodge for special work in which the Master undertook to help us. For a long time,- up till about now, we had kept the secret of Mary's faculties and development , but for the group these became known . The group included Count Bubua, -{himself endowed with psychic faculties and in touch with his Master Mahatma Morya)- Scott Elliott , Miss Arundale , Mr. and Mrs. Varley and one or two others , and of course included Mary and Mr. Leadbeater. The papers which were prepared for the illumination of the group were of great interest and gave rise to the important "Transactions of the London Lodge" which were published now in rapid succession.

Mary stayed with us this year until the beginning of June. My wife's health had been delicate and at the Doctor's wish on her account we went to Ramsgate for a fortnight after Mary left us . I had been earning a salary for a time as manager of the Kegan Paul Publishing Company, - one of Bottornley's undertakings which had not come utterly to grief like most of the others but dragged on an improfitable existence for many years and I was working very hard at writing for the Indian papers. In July my wife went to the farm on Southampton water with the Arundales , and I on a trip to the North Cape in one of the Norwegian yachting steamers. On my return I was laid up for a day or two at the hotel at Copenhagen with a very severe sore throat ; but this got right again and I came home via Hamburg on one of the German steamers bound for America, but touching at Southampton. My wife by this time had gone on to Southsea and I joined her there. On our return home we made

44

efforts to fmd a cheaper house but eventually the agent representing the lady 10

who was owner of the Leinster Gardens house agreed to let us go on at a great reduction of the rent and so we stayed.

In 1893 Mary came to us rather earlier than usual, at the end of January, but though our mesmerism, our group meetings and other theosophical activ­ities went on pretty much as usual, both Mary and my wife were continually falling ill in one way or another and then in April a thrilling event occurred. Mary, under urgent pressure from her higher self, whom we called "She" got herself engaged to be married. As I have suppressed her real name in this nar­rative I must also, of course, suppress that of her destined husband, and in­deed there is much connected with the engagement that I cannot deal with freely . Mary, in her waking consciousness approached the marriage with pro­found reluctance, - but she was compelled to submit. As far as I could make out when she was in a trance, the Master himself declined to interfere in the matter, one way or the other. Her destined husband was a man for whom my wife and I had a very great regard, one of our intimate theosophical friends but we felt convinced that the proposed marriage would put an end to the conditions that had so far regulated our intercourse with Mary .

She left us to return home in June , but was back again with us in September and was married from our house on Tuesday the 1Oth of October, 1893. The consequences of this marriage were strange and unforseen and instead of picking up little incidents, one by one, from the diary as they de­veloped it will be more convenient to deal with this subject comprehensively.

For a time no startling change in Mary's relations with ourselves were apparent. Her husband did not oppose himself in any way to their mainten­ance on the old footing. Mary would sometimes come to us to dine, have a trance and stay the night. I would visit her occasionally at her new house and give her mesmeric help if she were unwell. But I gradually noticed, as her cheerful acquiesence in the new life became more apparent, that her former intensity of interest in our London Lodge meetings and in my lec­tures , slackened off by degrees. She would neglect them for the sake of social pleasures, while formerly they' would have taken precedence of everything, Then she showed an increasing anxiety to disguise her connection with Theosophy from her husband's relations (always excepting his sisters who were themselves earnestly attached to it). Her husband I should explain was very well off and connected closely with a very wealthy family. He, be it always understood, would have sacrificed anything and everything for theos­ophy but his devotion was concentrated on his wife, whose psychic gifts and spiritual advancement (at the period of the marriage) commanded his un­reserved allegiance.

45

In the direction I have indicated the change went on slowly but steadily. 72

A circumstance in my own recollection enables me to recognise a definite date at the close of my old relations with Mary. This was the year 1898. On the surface we remained affectionate friends but the occult relationship faded away , as Mary became more and more absorbed by the worldly interests of her married life . At first I was glad that she found this much happier than she had anticipated, but there was an element of sadness in the change . And this led to a certain strain of feeling between her and my wife whose untainted loyalty to the higher life made her almost intolerant to Mary's backsliding. Mary would pass spontaneously into a trance condition , when alone with him, and would speak to him from what seemed to be her old "She" level. We , - my wife and I, -began to distrust what we heard of their communica­tions . For my part , after 1898 I never had any sittings with Mary of the old kind , -not the faintest gleam of anything resembling communication through her with the Master.

My personally affectionate relations with Mary continued, unbroken so to speak, on the surface, but somehow their colour was modified, though in crises they revived as for example when my dear wife passed on from this life in 1908, when Mary 's sympathy with my grief was glowing and beautiful. But a little later than this a terrible development ensued. To e.l(plain this I must deal at once with the Leadbeater crisis in the affairs of The Theosophical Society -a crisis which came on in 1906.

Mr. Lead beater had for some years previously been travelling about the world lecturing chiefly in the United States. Many people in America had seized what they thought the favourable opportunity of entrusting their boys to his care . Eventually horrible rumours got into circulation to the effect that his relations with these boys were of a criminal order. Some indignant believ­ers in these rumours agitated the matter with determination. Mrs. Besant and Colonel Olcott were appealed to. A very disagreeable body of correspondence grew up and though not actually published was widely circulated in type­written copies. Colonel Olcott then in Europe, came over to London to deal with the matter and called together a large, informal committee which he called an "Advisory Board", to consult with him as to what ought to be done. Mr. Leadbeater attended the meeting. the proceedings at which were extrem­ely unpleasant. Leadbeater frankly admitted that in order to save boys from what he considered the great evil of desire for the other sex, he had taught them what is commonly called self-abuse. Cross questioned by those on the Board who were bitterly inimical to him he made admissions in regard to the details of his teaching which were distinctly nauseous, although of course he met the suggestion that he had committed the criminal offence, with con-

46

tempuous denial. 7 a Now from the first moment that he found himself a danger to the

Society, he placed his resignation in the hands of Colonel Olcott and the question to be decided by the advisory Board was whether this resignation should be accepted or Mr. Lead beater be formally expelled. I moved an amendment to a fierce resolution proposed by Mr. Leadbeater's most embit­tered antagonists, in favour of the milder course and this was eventually carried out. Mr. Leadbeater then withdrew into retirement , and though the Society had undoubtedly received a shock by what had taken place no immediate ruptures ensued.

Colonel Olcott died at Adyar in February 1907 and I received a letter from Mrs. Russak then at Adyar, describing manifestations by the Masters around his deathbed. Neither my wife nor I believed in the authenticity of the alleged manifestations, though information I have received from the White Lodge within the last year or two shows that they had a better found­ation than we supposed at the time.

By the rules of the Society, I, as Vice-President became invested with the authority of the Presidential office , until the new President should be elected. Some embarrassing problems arose. I was urged by letters from Adyar to dele­gate my authority to someone on the spot , Mr. Bertram Keightley being sug­gested by the Treasurer, Dr. Davidson, while Mrs. Besant cabled to me asking me to nominate herself. She had, according to Mrs. Russak's account of the phenomenal manifestations by the Masters, been pointed out as the new President and confusion seemed to reign at Adyar. Disbelieving in the alleged manifestations I did nqt think it right to acquiesce in her proposal, while to appoint Bertram Keightley, who was very antagonistic to her by reason of siding with Mr. Leadbeater's most embittered enemies, seemed to offensive to her. So I adopted the middle course of cabling Dr. Davidson investing him with my authority, such as it was.

The so-called "election" of a new President was then carried out, but no name except that of Mrs. Besant was put forward and the Society was simply asked to approve or disapprove of that nomination. The arrangements were thus somewhat irregular but the votes in approval were a large majority and thus Mrs. Besant was confirmed in the appointment. I had not, nor have a word to say against the result, however reached. Mrs. Besant has proved her­self in most respects eminently qualified to lead the theosophical movement. She made, however, what I held and still hold to have been one great mistake. She invited Mr. Leadbeater to emerge from his retirement and join her at Adyar, proceeding to use all her influence to induce the General Coucil to welcome him back into the Society. This action on her part created frantic

47

uproar in the Society and secessions in all directions took place accordingly . 7 5

Already a strain of feeling had been developed between Mrs. Besant and myself. At first, on her confirmation as President she had nominated me as again Vice-President, but she took umbrage at an article I wrote in "Broad Views" entitled "The Vicissitudes of Theosophy" and formally requested me to resign the office. I complied and for a long time our relations were in abey­ance.

Perhaps Mrs. Besant's regard for Leadbeater may be explained in this way. She had been admitted by her own request to the meetings of our London Lodge group in June 1894. Up to that time her psychic faculties had not developed. Leadbeater was one of the most important elements in our group, - Mary of course the other. He was living on the salary of an appoint­ment I had been enabled to procure for him, in the London offices of the "Pioneer". I do not know exactly how the idea arose but soon after Mrs. Besant's connection with our group, an offer was made to him through Bertram Keightley to the effect that if he would give up his appointment at the "Pioneer" office and go to live at the Avenue Road and help in the work going on there , an income on which he would be able to live should be paid to him. The two Keightley's were both well off and they with some others were ready to guarantee the arrangement. Leadbeater declared that he would leave the decision in my hands. I was very sorry to agree to the proposal but I knew so well that Leadbeater himself would greatly like to accept it that I c~uld not stand in his way , and consented.

I think the close friendship which grew up between him and Mrs. Besant during his residence at the Avenue Road did much to stimulate the develop­ment of her psychic faculties, and by common experiences on the higher planes they were united in very sincere sympathy . Afterwards when Leadbeater went abroad, and was away for years in America and Australia I have no doubt that Mrs. Besant felt the loss of his companionship very keenly, and when she became President was eager to recover it. Anyhow she invited him to Adyar and he went there.

People in this country who took a severe view of his conduct were deeply incensed and the London Lodge included many such people . Mary herself was bitterly indignant at his restoration to the Society and her influence with many members of the L. L. was all-powerful. I had no strong feeling on the other side myself though I did not exactly share hers, but when it came to a question of a vote in the London Lodge, the vote was absolutely unanimous in favour of withdrawing from The Theosophical Society. Only one member dissented and he stayed away from the meeting. The Lodge did not wish to dissolve but to go on an independent footing with a new name .

Thus it came to pass that the Eleusinian Society was formed in the begin-

48

ning of 1909 a dreary period for me soon after my wife had passed away, but 7 7

I will deal with the later events of our private life when some of these general ·explanations have been completed.

Reverting now to what I have described as a terrible development in my relations with Mary, - it came about in this way. The Eleusinian Society only lasted a year or two. The Leadbeater trouble as regarded the Society generally had practically blown over. I had been able to open up a new channel of communication -with the Master,- of which I will speak more fully later on and I came to know that he wished me to rejoin The Theosophical Society . He did not blame me for having formed the Eleusinian. On the contrary he had himself suggested the name to me. But it had served its purpose. I myself felt that it was absurd that I should remain outside the great movement that I had been privileged to start in the Western World, and discussing the matter with Mrs. Besant in the course of her visit to London in 1911 I found that she also, by her owns means of knowing was aware of the fact that the Masters wished me to return. I did so; was restored to my original office as Vice­President and received an immense number of letters from theosophical lodges and individual members all over the world welcoming me back often in very touching terms.

But Mary, whose dislike of Leadbeater only grew more and more intense with time, at once, with her husband resigned the Eleusinian on the ground that my return to The Theosophical Society brought it too closely into association with that body and sent me a paper embodying her views on the subject which she wished me to read to the Society at a meeting I had thought it necessary to call in order to explain my return to the Theosophical Society.

I wrote back asking her not to insist on this as if I read her paper, I should be obliged to comment on it and say things I would rather leave un-. said, meaning that I should be obliged frankly to admit that I did not continue to regard her impressions as trustworthy. She seems to have mis­understood me and to have imagined that I meant to go into details concern­ing my psychic relations with her , - which I had no thought of doing, - and wrote me a fearfully angry letter . Never mind its exact contents. The mis­understanding waa partially smoothed over in time, but although we agreed to remain friends , we had to ignore all matters connected with occultism.

I will come back now to the course of our (my wife's and my) private life, though the comprehensive narrative I have been giving above leaves little to be said of interest to future reade'rs I may as well however, sum up the facts connected with the brief career of our son, - Percy Edensor Sinnett, -which is not a cheerful story by any means. Though quite free from vices of

49

any commonplace order, and with engaging manners that favourably impres- 78

sed acquaintances, "Denny" as he was generally called had, as the familiar phrase puts it, no backbone in his character with the result that he failed, generally with discredit, in all the attempts we made to launch him in life. At about 18 he was admitted as a gentleman cadet, to a very rich and important mercantile firm in the City. If he had done commonly well there his ultimate fortune would have been secure. As it was he -did not do commonly well and was practically dismissed after a short trial of him. Then he had a fancy for the army medical service and some preliminary steps were taken in that direction. Then during the brief period of my apparent commercial recovery he was by his own wish provided with a commission in a Militia Regiment with the idea of getting by that road into the regular army. He was expensively coached, but failed in his examination. Then the South Africa War broke out and we got him, through private interest, a regular commission without examination and he went out to the Cape. There instead of being sent to the front, he was kept with the force guarding prisoners, and got into all sorts of scrapes, the worst of which was that he fell in love with and actually married, - without referring the matter home to us all, - a young lady, daughter of a local Doctor. She of course was utterly without private means and Denny ab­solutely depended on ourselves and when the delusive period of my apparent fmancial recovery came to an end by reason of the collapse of the later Bottrnley Companies, the difficulties of the situation became acute .

It is needless, and would be scarcely possible for me to trace their devel­opments in detail, Denny lost his commission as a consequence of bad reports by his superior officers, and came back to England with his wife. I got him an appointment such as it was, in the "Sun" newspaper office, owned then by Bottomley, but that did not answer. He went back to the Cape and tried to get on there, - working more earnestly I think than ever before , but the re­sults were miserable and he fell into a rapid consumption. We had quite grown used to the idea that his life was drawing to a close, but unhappily he contrived at the last to come back with his wife to England, and he was then in the last stages of emaciation and manifestly dying. The shock my wife experienced on seeing him in this state was terrible, and during the few weeks that he lived she contracted the cancer of which she died in 1908. As I write two boys are living who are sons of Denny' but his widow promptly married again and much trouble has ensued from that arrangement, though it is hardly necessary for me to enlarge on that theme.

I revert now to the period of Mary's marriage in 1893 and will pick up from the diary the little events of our life that lay outside the more important events I have dealt with comprehensively in the last few pages. But for the

50

next few years there is not much of personal interest to record, except of so course as far as the financial vicissitudes already dealt with were concerned. We frequently went to Southsea for an inexpensive change and there we made the acquaintance of the Gregory Smith family , · Americans, much interested in my writings. I became very intimate for a time with the son , and went a trip with him to Berlin and elsewhere in 1897. The same year,- when our affairs had temporarily brightened, we- my wife and I, Gregory Smith, a lady whom he afterwards married, Mr. Ebury, and our old friend Mrs. Jardine , went on a very pleasant Swiss tour, staying for a fairly long time at Chamounix.

While in London in 1897 I was constantly lecturing to meetings of the London Lodge, and occasionally elsewhere and theosophical work f!lled up most of our time. In 1898 our holidays were spent at Spa, whither Mrs. Jardine accompanied us. My wife had been in very delicate health her lungs being rather out of order and supposed at the time to be the principal danger to which she was exposed, but she was also very much troubleq with some ailment that affected her feet, and was quite an invalid when we went to Spa but got better there. In 1899 we visited the Gregory Smith's {then married) at Florence where they had settled down, but the lady, I think, was a little jealous of our friendship with her husband, and our intimacy, after this grad­ually evaporated. The Florence visit was paid in the early part of the year. In the autumn I visited the Tweedales, at their house in Scotland, Balquholly, where I was also kindly entertained on two or three occasions later. Mrs. Tweedale had great psychic gifts and had been in touch with The Theos­ophical Society from Madame Blavatsky's time , when she was Miss Chambers.

It hardly seems worth while to record in detail the events of the next few years . They were chiefly devoted to theosophical lecturing and London Lodge meetings and the brightest spots in them were our autumn visit to Spa where we both enjoyed our harmless little gambling at the roulette tables and our pleasant mornings in the hotel garden. Our finances, were, however, in a very unsatisfactory condition and I somehow carried on by means of tempor­ary salaries I had from the Kegan Paul Co. , and from Bottomley in connec­tion with the ultimately unfortunate Electrozone business, supplemented by the earnings of hard work for the Indian papers.

In the course of the year 1902 I saw a great deal of a certain native of India calling himself Sheik Habeeb Ahmad. He was deeply interested in a theory, concerning Sound and Number which I also found very remarkable . I need not describe the theory here because I eventually wrote for Ahmad, a book which was published with the title ''The Mysteries of Sound and Number" and anyone wishing to get into the matter more fully can no doubt

51

obtain a sight of that book in the British Museum. I did not allow my name 81

to be connected with it and it was published as by Ahmad. But the whole matter ended in a very unsatisfactory manner. I lent Ahmad various sums of money; never received anything for my work on the book and became for many reasons disgusted with Ahmad, who disappeared after a time, owing me some £80. He was a drunkard among other characteristics and I heard dis­agreeable stories concerning him. But he certainly had some curious frag­ments of occult knowledge and the theory set forth in the book appears to be trustworthy as far as it goes.

Denny and his wife went back to South Africa in November 1902, his efforts to get on here having been entirely fruitless, though costing us a good deal both in money and annoyance.

We spent the Christmas of that year (I 902) at Eastbourne where Mrs. Campbell Praed and "Nancy" (Miss Harward) were also staying. I had made Miss Harward's acquaintance many years previously at Southsea and she proved delightfully sensitive to mesmerism. We kept touch with her and saw her at intervals and in trance I heard from her something about her un­happy slave life in Rome . Eventually we introduced her to Mrs. Praed and from that moment the two became very close friends. Through Nancy I came into touch with an advanced Chela of the great Adept, Hilarion, and gath­ered much interesting information from him, though I was a little misled by him in reference to the shaft supposed to penetrate the earth at the North Pole. I embodied this information in an L. L. Transaction and afterwards in a new edition of my book "The Growth of the Soul". When the North Pole was ultimately discovered and neither land nor shaft were found there I felt very much disconcerted. Much later on I learned that the shaft was etheric, not physical , but the mistake was unfortunate.

As Mrs. Praed became intimate with Nancy who lived with her almost from their first introduction, she obtained full and detailed information about Nancy's Roman life, when she was called Nyria, and wrote the novel published under that name. A good deal of the manuscript was read to us during our Christmas visit to Eastbourne. The story as told in the novel , is a genuine narrative of real events.

During 1903 I made arrangements for the production of a monthly magazine to be called "Broad Views". The capital,- not adequate to the cost of bold advertising, - was kindly subscribed by friends and I put a great deal of earnest work into the undertaking but it never paid its way. Outgoings were always in excess of receipts and though I kept it going for about three years it perished at the end of that time and the money put into it was lost.

In June 1905 we moved from Leinster Gardens to a smaller and cheaper

52

house, 14 Westbourne Terrace Road. We could not have stayed so long at sa Leinster Gardens but for the concession made by the owner of the house in the matter of rent which had been considerably reduced for the last few years. I was obliged to sell off for next to nothing my laboratory apparatus as the new house did not afford me any room for a laboratory, - a great priva­tion. It is not worth while to record in detail the little events of the next year or two. We continued to hold the L. L. meetings at the new house, which our friends frequented as much as ever, though the situation was much less convenient than Leinster Gardens. In August 1905 we paid a visit to Mr. and Mrs . Macrae at their country house Meonstoke in Hampshire. The monetary strain was very trying all this time.

For some time past I had been in the habit of attending spiritual seances at Sir Alfred Turner's. There it was that I first got into touch with an entity on the other side , - Reynolds , with whom I have become much more intimate since . I gathered that I had been of service to him on the astral plane though the details only came to my knowledge later on. All that relates to this matter and its very important developments must be told apart from the personal events of the last few years of the period while my wife was still with me.

The record is not a cheerful one. My wife's health was very delicate and our news from South Africa more and more depressing. Denny was evidently in consumption and constantly asking for money regardless of my inability to supply it. The Theosophical situation was also strained and disagreeable. At last the climax was put to our trouble by the return to this country of Denny, his wife and Mrs. Hartley (Gwen's mother) . l met them at the Docks in April 1908 and found Denny in an unrecognisable condition of disease and emacia­tion . Lodgings had been taken for them in Norland Square and there my wife saw him in the afternoon . When I returned home I found her in a state of agonised misery and despair , weeping and utterly overcome. We had grown used to the idea that Denny 's life was nearing its end, and had he stayed in South Africa the news of his death would of course have been a shock to his mother, but one not comparable with the shock she actually experienced by seeing him in the state to which he had been reduced when he arrived in England. After a few wretched weeks during which my wife was constantly with him, suffering seriously in her own health in consequence, he died on the 11th of May.

It was soon after this that we came definitely to the conclusion that my wife was suffering from cancer. The question arose as to whether she should undergo an operation but to this she was resolutely opposed, - not fearing death but convinced from all we had heard of other cases, that one operation would merely be a prelude to others at a later date and would only protract

53

life for a time under miserable conditions. Moreover she and I had some hope 84

that my mesmeric treatment might vanquish the disorder . Several years prev­iously she had noticed a small lump in one breast which the Doctor declared to be probably cancer. He said that every specialist would recommend an immediate operation . At the time I was in very good form for mesmeric work , and we decided to wait a week and see what I could do. At the end of that time the evil had certainly not developed . I went on and eventually the threatening symptoms disappeared. But now, after Denny's death, when my wife found a new growth -not in the former place but on the other side ,- the situation was more serious. The new growth had been neglected during the miserable period of Denny's illness and when my attention was called to it, it proved beyond the reach of such influence as I could bring to bear upon it.

The progress of the wretched disease was slow. We went in the summer to Cromer in the hope that the air there might be beneficial and the time was not altogether distressing, as no pain had yet begun and we were able to enjoy the change to a certain extent. Then we ventured on a last visit to Spa , but my wife grew worse instead of better and pain set in. I remember one awful night when for the flrst time it became really severe and nothing I could do relieved it, I got a local Doctor next day to inject morphia but it became impossible for my wife to leave her room to dress and how I could get her home was an appalling problem. Its solution was found unexpectedly in this way :- she became sensitive to my mesmerism (no doubt I was helped) to an extent that no former experience had promised. I could put her into a complete trance and found her amendable to suggestion . In this way on the morning we fixed for our departure . I succeeded in putting her off and gave the suggestion that she should be able to dress and get to the train without incurring a renewal of the pain. The suggestion worked and we got off with surprising ease. I had been afraid of overstraining the influences and so had not carried the suggestion beyond the main difficulty of getting her dressed and into the train . During the journey therefore the pain to some extent recurred, but we were provided with a morphia preparation and somehow we contrived to get home , though the passage from Antwerp to Harwich was rough and disagreeable and intensely fatiguing as she got no sleep.

The rest of the story is merely a continuation of the last few sentences. Some faint hopes for a time were associated with a treatment we heard of depending on a preparation of alder bark, but the situation grew steadily worse . First one nurse , ultimately two had to be engaged . Friends were eagerly sympathetic but there was nothing to be done but to await the end , using morphia injection every night , and mesmerism as well .

My wife contrived to keep up her diary till September 11th including a

54

record of our unhappy time at Spa, and up to that time she had been able to 86

get up for part of the day and come down into the drawing room but the entry of September 11th is the last she made. Then she had finally to remain in bed. And as the situation grew worse she was rarely in possession of her natural faculties. It was a terribly miserable time for me. She escaped from the suffering body, - died as commonplace language would express it , -at mid­night on the 9th November.

I was myself almost in a state of nervous prostration and careless of worldly details. I went for a visit to Balquholly, - (the Tweedale's house in Scotland) in the hope that Mrs. Tweedale's psychic faculties would enable her to get me some news of my wife 's condition on the other side. She and her husband were very kind and sympathetic but she was quite unable to get any news for me. I had meanwhile engaged rooms at 59, Jermyn Street and- re­turning to London, took up my quarters there on the 3rd of December.

I am writing now, three and a half years later, - and can look back on the agonising period I have just been describing, with comparative composure be­cause, I now know all about the magnificent conditions of exalted existence to which my wife has passed, and have had what amounts to frequent speech with her and the final portion of this narrative will be devoted to an explan­ation of the manner in which this has become possible, but in the first in­stance I may sum up the physical plane incidents of the last few years, though these are to some extent blended with the occult developments .

During the existence of " Broad Views" I wrote and published in that magazine a story dealing with the phenomenon of Double Personality and entitled "Married by Degrees" . About the same time I recast it as a stage play bu t then the loss of my wife overwhelmed all ideas of that kind , and for a long time I thought no more of the play. But meanwhile I had met,- at Mrs . Jardine's, - an American actress , - Miss Maud Hoffman who wished to make my acquaintance by reason of being deeply interested in Theosophy. The acquaintanship soon ripened into a very cordial and sincere friendship and one day when with her, I remembered my play and asked her to read it. She made many important suggestions arising from her superior knowledge of the stage and eventually we set to work to recast it in collaboration. Ultimately it was produced at the Court Theatre on Sunday the 5th of March by the Theatrical Society called "The Play Actors", with decided success. After pro· tracted efforts we interested a professional producer, Mr. Arthur Hardy , in the undertaking and under his auspices, - at the expense, however of a syn­dicate in which I took a large share and to which several of my friends sub­scribed, the play was brought out with a first rate cast, - again unhappily at the Court Theatre - on the 16th September, 1911. The newspapers' criticisms

55

were extraordinarily favourable but the place and time had been ill chosen. 88

Though the (paper) audiences were always delighted, the fmancial results were disastrous. Reckoning £40 that I contributed to the expense of the original performance by the Play Actors , I lost £700 by the enterprise and my friends collectively as much, or more than as much again.

It has since collapsed altogether and my investment therein was a total loss. Similiar results have attended all my efforts to make money by business enterprise .

I hoped at the time that this loss, - which was very formidable in compar­ison with my means, might have been recouped by the success of the "International Foil Co" set on foot by my good friend Mr. Faulding to develop a new process for rolling aluminium into foil . I put some money into this enterprise , Mr. Faulding made over to me considerable amounts of shares in the Company (and its allied companies which were gradually brought into being, -) and I became a Director of, and ultimately Chairman of the International Foil Company - the parent of the manufacturing companies. Many difficulties and disappointments have so far stood in the way of its success and as I write its future seems a little uncertain.

Reading over this narrative in 1914 a note seems required to explain how I could have had so much money to lose. Some had come to my wife by the division (in anticipation of her death) of certain property held by Mrs . Edensor (my wife 's mother, then growing very old). Then my wife who was extremely economical and had contrived to save a little and this came into my hands when she passed away. The furniture, however , of our house was sold and in this way I set out on my lonely later life , with some moderate funds in my possession.

About the time of my return to the Society, in 1911, Mrs. Besant conceived the idea of building an important headquarters for the British Section . With her usual energy .she pushed forward the idea; secured a site adjacent to Tavistock Square and collected money for the enterprise. The building, - designed by Mr. Lutyens, - was to cost £50,000.

In the course of the three months that elapsed from the first inception of the scheme to the date of Mrs. Besant's departure from London on her way back to India , she had obtained, either in cash or substantial promises no less than £24,000. The first stone of the proposed building was laid by her with all Masonic ceremonies on September 3rd 1911.

I may now deal with the lastest phase of my occult experiences still in activity as I write. They began in connection with the communications I re­ceived from Reynolds at Sir Alfred Turner's seances. Reynolds seized every opportunity of communicating with me and as a chance circumstance

56

showed me that my clairvoyant friend Robert King could get in touch with 89

Reynolds elsewhere than at the Turner seances, it seemed to me only court­eous to him, to provide him with a better opportunity of having speech with me than the Turner seances afforded. So I engaged Mr. King to come to my rooms for a series of sittings which might afford Reynolds the facilities he seemed to seek.

A very rich reward for this effort on my part was in store for me. My sittings with King began on the 31st of October 1909. I found that Reynolds was definitely attached to the Masters of the White Lodge, especially to Hilarion. Our conversation in the beginning grew out of my questions concerning the conditions of the life on the astral plane and dealt also with various scientific problems. The influence of comets on the Astral plane of the Earth, was one of the subjects Reynolds was enabled to elucidate . Then, one evening in November, King heard a new voice claiming to be Laplace the astronomer who gave me some information about Mars, and its people and canals. Up to this time King did not go into trances with me but repeated what he heard said.

A long interval elapsed between the 2nd of December 1909 and the 19th of October 1910, during which our sittings were suspended, but on the latter date, when King had been spending the evening with me , without expecting communication from Reynolds he saw a white robed figure flit past me and got from it the name "Damodar" and a few words heard with difficulty. Damodar was (when I first met him during Madame Blavatsky's first visit to us at Allahabad) a young native of India attached to her as a sort of secretary . Later on he went with her and Colonel Olcott to Adyar when the head­quarters of the Society were established at that place and again much later on was permitted to go in the physical body to Tibet and to join the household of the Master K. H. Those of our old London Lodge group who could re­member astral experiences used to see him there when we were , - as fre­quently happened, assembled at the Master's house.

On the same evening which was marked by Damodar's first appearance I had a visit from H. P. B. and Judge .

On October 27th King again dined with me and afterwards interpreted Damodar and H. P. B. who gave me a detailed account of what happened at Adyar on the occasion of Olcott's death. This differed in some respects from the story as told me (by letter) at the time by Mrs. Russak but confirmed the main idea that the Masters Morya and K. H. had taken part in the proceed­ings.

On the lOth of November I had a brief communication from my wife,­the first of many that followed later. King's consciousness on this occasion,

57

though he was not in trance was lifted up to the Master's (K. H.'s) house and 91

he was exhilarated to an extraordinary extent by the sensations this gave him. On the 1st of December the Master K. H. spoke to me for the first time

from his own house, King repeating what he said. He promised to overshadow King and speak through him on another occasion. This he did on the 15th of December King being completely entranced and as regarded his own con­sciousness, - away at the Master's house - I am not attempting here to record the actual communications made to me, but simply to explain the gradual development of the conditions now established. Writing now in June 1912 I will only say that the conditions established in the way I have described, are still prevailing. King now passes off without any effort, into the trance condition and those who are permitted to come speak to me through his voice with perfect freedom. He has been emphatically warned never to allow himself to be thus controlled except during these sittings with me and ap­preciates the dignity of our joint undertaking to the full. He has been repeat­edly commended by the Masters for keeping his body in a state in which it can be used in this way.

So now I may regard the autobiographical sketch as finished for the moment. I have accumulated in several M. S. books elaborate notes of the conversations I have held and continue to hold with the illustrious represent­atives of the Whlte Lodge , my own revered chief K. H. - Morya, Hilarion, the Count and others and will either epitomise these myself later on, or leave them to be dealt with by the trustees to whom the ultimate treatment of this record will be entrusted. Probably I shall meanwhile have occasion to add to this narrative as time advances but at all events it is for the moment provision­ally complete.

(Signed) A. P. SINNETT,

June 3rd, 1912.

58

AT A LATER DATE

When I brought this narrative to a provisional conclusion four years ago, I found that -having then attained the age of 72 , it might be as well to make all preparation for passing on to another kind of life. But it has appeared to the Masters of the White Lodge that there was still work for me to do on this plane, so at this later date I fmd myself still at the age of 76 , in physical health and mental capacity,- just as I have been for the last 30 or 40 years. A word or two may be worth insertion here in further explanation of that state of things. I have never been seriously ill - so I must have started with an un­usually sound constitution. I am led to believe that since my devotion to theosophical work, influences of an abnormal kind have been poured into me to maintain my physical vigour. Probably when higher wisdom decides that my work is done , the withdrawal of these influences may lead to a rapid col­lapse of my residual vitality and a transfer,· which I shall heartily welcome,­to superphysical realms.

As I write now we are all still in the midst of the great War destined to change the whole course of human history . I was enabled to forecast its com­ing in the year 1911. My touch with the White Lodge, - through Mr. Robert King, · has been continuous ever since I last wrote and is still maintained. In the year above named I gave a lecture to the Eleusinian Society, then in be­ing, which deeply impressed hearers at the time. No full report was preserved at the time, but in the "Vahan" for October 1914 I published the following statement:-

" My intimate theosophical friends have long been aware of the circum­stances under which I was enabled to forecast the war now in progress as far back as the beginning of 1911. In the March of that year I gave a lecture to a large audience at the Asiatic Society's rooms in Albemarle Street embodying the information I had received a month or two previously. I kept notes of that information at the time of its reception (in January 1911) and these notes have been found so interesting to those with whom I have been recently reading them over, that it seems desirable to give them a wider publicity. Now, therefore , I copy out, exactly as I received it at the time, the inform­ation to which I refer.

"There was a thickening force gathering on the lower astral plane which could not fail to have terrible effects on the physical plane when it burst. The Masters were trying to soften its effects. The present German plan was not to annex Holland but to attack Belgium. There would ultimately be a general war in which Germany , including Austria and the Turks, would be opposed to

1

Great Britain, Russia, France and Italy. 2

"The German Emperor was the centre of German hostility. He had some regard for his English kinsmen but was the bitter enemy of the race. Bismarck was working on him though the Kaiser was not conscious of this. Direct ele­mental influence had accounted for some of his speeches. His second son, -not the first, who was weak, - but the sailor, -was of the same temperament as the father. The same elemental forces worked through both. The Kaiser's scheme contemplated a direct attack on and the conquest of England. He was not aiming at an indemnity but he wanted to be crowned King of the British Empire.

"It was decreed that the issue of the great war would be on the side of the allies and they would fmally crush the Germans. It would be terrible for the German people. At the close there would be a great redistribution of European territory. 1913 would be the year of the war, but there would be diplomatic mutterings much sooner."

The White Lodge, I was told, would earnestly endeavour to avert the cal­amity but little hope was entertained of complete success in that direction. Bad national karma inherited from the decadent period of the Roman em­pire, afforded the Black powers a nucleus for their evil activity. Bismarck, even more powerful on the astral plane than he had ever been in life, was obsessing the German Emperor. He had been made to believe that it was God's will the Germans should dominate the whole of Western Europe. I was enabled to obtain a clear view of his attitude of mind. He had been "shown" the end of the war, - "Germany triumphat." The Black Powers whose tool he had become, were thus encouraging him to persevere in his efforts to bring it about. He utterly discredited the idea that England would take any part in it. We should desert the French entente when the crisis came.

None the less, I was assured by a far more trustworthy informant who foresaw the terrible war impending, that in the end our country and France would emerge successful and victorious.

In February, 1911, I had some further information. My notes record it as follows:-

"The Americans were anticipating the war but would remain neutral. It would be confmed to Europe, the whole of which would be involved. Some trouble would arise in India but that would all be safely arranged. Germany was relying to some extent on what she conceived to be our inability to with­draw troops from India but she would be mistaken. Occult steps would be taken to liberate European troops from India. There are more there than are necessary. Forces that might lead to disruption would be held back," that the outbreak would take place in 1913 and again I was told that the war

2

would be "short, sharp and terrible". I have no note defmitely relating to the 3

time it would last, but my recollection is to the effect that I was told it would be over in 18 months. But as the programme of impending events stood in 1911 , it included a successful invasion of this country by the Germans, who would only at last be compelled to withdraw by complete defeat on the con­tinent. The Balkan war, however, drew off some of the mysterious unseen forces making for disaster, and the White Lodge, unable to avert the greater catastrophe altogether , were at all events successful in postponing it. The time thus gained was admirably made use of in the improvement of our navy, and in April, 191 7, I was told that the danger of an actual invasion of England was practically over. The comforting assurance was emphasised again in the following month, and (it is only fair to add) great credit was given to Mr. Winston Churchill for the work he was doing in stimulating the efficiency of the navy .

From time to time throughout the current year I heard of various at­tempts to provoke European disorder which were obviated by the White Lodge, and I continually sought to hear what wAs going to take place in Ire­land, where up to a period shortly preceding the outbreak of the great war, preparations seemed to foreshadow serious trouble . I was always told how­ever not to be uneasy about Ireland. Nothing in the nature of civil war was imminent there. Events have fulfilled that negative prophecy as well as the more momentous forecast concerning the great war itself now in progress, the awful effects of which on the lower astral planes immediately surrounding the physical Earth are frightful beyond the reach of ordinary imagination.

I have one brief note relating to the prospects of the war , recorded in the early days of April, 1913 . It runs as follows: "Germany was holding back knowing the complete preparations of the Entente powers. If war began we should send 200,000 men to France to operate with the left wing."

A. P. SINNETI. When the war actually began I was enabled to learn a good deal more con­cerning the mighty Satanic intervention to which its origin was due, and thus I was permitted to explain, much later on, in the "Nineteenth Century" for October and November, 1915. I need not repeat the explanation here . Those articles will always be available for reference. I have been interested in hearing that they have greatly exasperated the Black Powers who would long since have made an end of me, if I had not enjoyed the protection of the White Lodge.

For the last four years my time has been almost entirely absorbed by Theosophical work - writing, lecturing, and conducting the meetings of the revived London Lodge - I continued to reside in Jermyn Street until July last

3

(i . e. 1915) when I removed (as I believe under pressure of influence from 5

above) to 38, Tavistock Square where I am now writing in rooms once occu­pied by one of the Masters then resident in London . In 1887 -{the year of Queen Victoria's Jubilee) a conference of the Masters (ten being present) was held in this room, and certain steps were taken preparing for an ultimate close and sympathetic union among the outlying Dominions constituting the British Empire.

An interesting state of things in this connection not yet generally ap­preciated by Theosophical students at the time I write, may as well be re­corded here. Until towards the end of the last century the people of the United States of America were marked out to be developed into the 6th sub­race of the present 5th root race , but the people in question became too deeply immersed in a material civilization to be available for this destiny . The young Slav race was ultimately chosen to be the new sub-race but a long time will elapse before it can be sufficiently grown up - so to speak, - to be capable of realising its potentialities. In the interim the British race will be the acting or temporary 6th sub-race. May , 1916. A. P. SINNETT.

January 2, 1920. P.S. Finding myself (January 2, 1920) still in physical incarnation four years after the date on which I last wrote it seems desirable that I should add to the story of my life some notes relative to the condition under which those four years have been spent. But the narrative in detail would merely embody a record of continued Theosophical work, lecturing and writing, although towards the clbse of the period I have been agreeably surprised by a rush of appreciative kindness in reference to my theosophical work for which no pre­vious experience had in any way prepared me.

Before dealing with that very pleasant topic I may as well record one in­teresting event of earlier occurrence . On November 3rd 1916 (1917) I was taken rather seriously ill with an attack of pleurisy. I had to call in a Doctor who insisted on my going to bed and having a nurse . Indeed he took a serious view of my condition and I heard afterwards made enquiry about my "next of Kin" , - though it never occurred to me to imagine that my life was threatened. I suffered some pain for a day or two but on the whole look back on the brief confinement to my rooms as one of considerable pleasure, as my friends gathered round me in considerable numbers . The Doctor at first wanted to keep me "Quiet" and to warn off visitors, but I would not tolerate that regime and friends flocked around me every day . The record was reached one day, to the bewilderment of my nurse , when, by the evening I had eleven

4

visitors. 7

On the 8th I was well enough to have a sitting with Robert King and was very defmitely directed to go out of London, for a fortnight and not to leave my rooms until I started. I had an invitation from Sir Harry Griffm then stay­ing at a hotel at Tunbridge Wells, and I went down to him on the lOth and did not return to town till the 29th.

Afterwards I learned the esoteric explanation of my illness. I had been at work, out of the body at night, with the Count, in Russia. For some reason I had been physically materialised in connection with the work, and in that condition had been successfully spattered, by some black enemies with an evil influence they were freely making use of which we called "Neptunion paste" as it was prepared with some influences imported from the planet Neptune. Because I was materialised when this took place, the effect repercussed on my permanent physical body and gave me the illness I have described. During the fortnight in the country I was treated on the higher planes in such a way as to render me immune to any repetition of such attacks.

I had a very pleasant time in June 1918 when I went to Edinburgh to preside over the Convention of the Scottish National Society. Mr. Ellingsen made arrangements for my perfect comfort on the journey north and I was most hospitably entertained while in Edinburgh by Mr. and Mrs. Ingram. The visit was a great success in every way and at the various meetings and lectures I gave I was most cordially received. I returned to London again in Mr. Ellingsen's care, and incidentally I may add that his cordial friendship ever since has been a great pleasure to me.

In August 1918 I stayed for a very enjoyable fortnight with Mrs. Wijk at Seaton in Devonshire and on my circuituous way back visited the Theos­ophical Lodges at Exeter, Cheltenham and Bournemouth, staying for a few days at the last named place with Mr. and Mrs. Macrae whose sympathetic friendship both before that visit and since has been a great pleasure for me .

In March 1919 I went for a midland lecturing tour to Leeds, Harrogate and Bradford, all arrangements being made for my comfort by Mr. Best of Leeds. My recollections of this tour are crowded with pleasant impressions.

I have learned much by this time of the higher plane history of the last ten years. From her point of view of the higher planes before her physical death, my wife actually chose, of her own accord, the terribly distressing and painful mode in which she made her exit from physical life. Nor was this done with any idea of wiping off bad Karma. She had no bad Karma to deal with. She would have passed on quite easily if she had not made the choice I describe. But she had come to understand the sublime beauty of self sacrifice in the interest of humanity at large. The full elucidation of the idea is hardly

5

possible in terms that would be intelligible to physical plane understanding. 8

Advanced occult students will partially comprehend it, bv reason of vaguely knowing that the Masters of the Divine Hierarchy contribute to "bearing the karma of the world". Anyhow, · bv making her sacrifice my wife established conditions providing, as it turned out, for her marvellous exaltation after passing on.

Now if my own normal Karma had been allowed to operate, I should have passed on a few months after my wife's departure, but in view of what she had done , it was seen by higher wisdom that if I did not consent to be , so to speak, left behind, I must make some sort of sacrifice corresponding to that made by my wife . Thus it came to be settled, doubtless with my full consent on the higher planes, that I should endure the tedium of a prolonged stay in physical life , to be devoted to theosophical work. Arrangements were therefore made to maintain my physical vigour unimpaired, so that all through the ten, (now eleven) years since my wife's passing I have undergone no physical change whatever, either in appearance or capacity · bodily or · mental. At eighty as I now write I feel exactly as I felt at sixty or earlier. Naturally I suppose it is unlikely that I shall have many more years, -or any, -to wait for my transfer to loftier conditions, but I have at all events an im­portant literary task in front of me, and meanwhile I have to acknowledge with gratitude and give some account of that recent rush of appreciation to which I have already alluded.

It began with a movement set on foot by a few of my most intimate theosophical friends, - Maud Hoffman, Mrs . Russell, Colonel Johnson, cons­picuous amongst them - to get up a testimonial in my honour which should take the shape of a sum of money, - of which it is true I stood rather def­initely in need. Though the collection was specially made within the limits of the London Lodge, it reached out beyond those limits, but nearly up to the culmination of the undertaking was carried on entirely without my knowl­edge. I was only told about it a little before the actual presentation to me of the sum collected . This took place on the 5th of April 1919 at Miss Hoffman's house 146 Harley Street when Mr. Baillie Weaver who had taken a kindly interest in the undertaking made the explanatory speech and presented me with the cheque- £510.

A large number of my theosophical friends had gathered together and though the surprise had very wisely discounted by a few days, I cannot exag­gerate the extent to which the demonstration touched and delighted me. And now I learn that a far more extended effort is in progress to obtain for me a testimonial that shall represent the kind feeling directed towards me from all parts and national sections of the world wide Theosophical Society. It may be

6

that I shall fmd it desirable to say more on this subject before this M.S. is 10

fmally completed but already I am deeply affected by the generous impulses that have inspired the preparatory efforts in progress.

7

THEOSOPIDCAL HISTORY CENTRE

SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THEOSOPHICAL HISTORY

CALL FOR PAPERS

An International Conference on Theosophical History will be held on July 17-19th 1987, Friday evening to Sunday, at 50, Gloucester Place, London WlH 8HJ, the headquarters of the Theosophical Society in England. It is sponsored by the Theosophical History Centre, from whom registration forms and other information can be obtained after 1st January 1987.

Any person may submit a paper for possible presentation at the Conference. Papers may be on any aspect of Theosophical History. Summaries of proposed papers should reach the Programme Committee by 28th February 1987. They should be double-spaced, typed in black or blue-black, and should not exceed 200 words. Decisions on summaries accepted will be sent to authors in late March. Full papers will be presented in not more than 30 minutes, with discussion to follow.

Conference participants will be expected to make their own arrangements for accommodation in London and for meals, though light refreshments will be available between sessions. All correspondence to Theosophical History Centre, 50, Gloucester Place, London WlH 3HJ.

Subscribe to

THEOSOPHICAL HISTORY

Theosophical History is an independent quarterly journal launched in January 1985 which reports on the expanding historical study of the Theosophical Movement -the persons and impulses associated with H. P. Blavatsky who founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. It prints original papers and hitherto unpublished archives; reviews; and news of research throughout the world. It also reprints important inaccessible material.· Without dwelling on personalities for their own sake, it seeks to aid the historical assessment of such pioneers as Alice Bailey, Annie Besant, W. Q. Judge, J. Krishnamurti, C. W. Leadbeater, G. R. S. Mead and Rudolf Steiner. By arrangement with the Society for Psychical Research, most issues carry an unpublished item from its files on theosophical phenomena. The journal is sympathetically neutral to the different expres­sions of Theosophy, and seeks to promote the common historical enterprise by Theosophists and non-Theosophists alike.

Please enter a subscription for Theosophical History.

NAME ........................................................................................ .

ADDRESS ................................................................................. .

I enclose £/$ ......... . 1 year £8/$20 2 years £12, $30

Please circle as applicable

I wish to start my subscription with issue:

January April July October 198 .....

Please send to: Mr. Leslie Price, c/o 50, Gloucester Place, London W 1 H 3HJ

THEOSOPHICAL HISTORY CENTRE

Founded in 1985, the Centre seeks to promote interest in the history of the Theosophical Society and related fields. Its second international conference is scheduled for July 1987 in London. Any person or group may become an associate member of the Centre, and this conveys the right to receive its publications free on issue. The associate subscription will be £6 ($12 U.S.) in 1987. (Members of the Theosophical Society in England may alternat­ively become full members of the Centre, and pay their member­ship dues through the T. H. C.).

Please note that the independent journal "Theosophical History" described on the inside cover requires a separate subscrip­tion though arrangements can be made for renewing them both together. For more information contact:

The Secretary Theosophical History Centre

50, Gloucester Place London WlH 3HJ

ISBN 0 948753 02 1